Dobie Gillis show

An interview on tap3x with Lenore about Introverted vs. Extraverted Judgement and the Dobie Gillis show

In that dialogue, Lenore makes some interesting comments about the Dobie Gillis show as an expression of P understandings of Je attitudes, and how different they are today. She spells out more of her thesis that trumps morally but can't provide a binding social framework.

Her remarks there might shed a lot of light on Lenore's conception of types and attitudes as essentially social vocabularies--very different than the conception of type as a person's intrinsic or essential nature.

Archived Text

About the Conversations

Here are two separate dialogues with individuals who have very stimulating ideas. Interestingly, both conversations followed somewhat parallel themes. They began shortly after the respective conversants explored materials that we had posted in a new section of the web site, still under construction, that is devoted to our organizational development work. This section is called 'Personality Type, Organizational Form, and the Structure of Human Consciousness', and in it we present a paper entitled 'Toward a Diversity of Psychological Type in Organization', which we delivered at a national conference for management faculty. The paper explores the relationship between personality type and the preferences that individuals have for different organizational forms. We tried to demonstrate that the most popular organizational forms are the result of a deep-seated cultural bias in favor of E over I, S over N, T over F, and J over P - preferences associated with the ESTJ, who can be considered the 'prototypical' type in the corporate sphere. In this context we ventured to ask, 'What organizational forms might result from honoring the culturally undervalued functions (N and F) and attitudes (I and P)?'

In this new section of the web site, we also began to present information about the work that we have been doing in our effort to distinguish 5 developmental levels for each of the four Jungian functions. For years now we have been busy conducting an extensive search of the literature with respect to theories and research regarding each of the functions. Some day very soon we hope to post the first of a series of papers - a 75 page work that presents a fairly extensive review of theories of emotion and feeling. The 'Javascript Tool For Exploring Typological Space' that we designed and posted along with these papers utilizes a very rough summary of the five levels for each function. Through the use of the FD33, we have also begun to experiment with how the distinctions between developmental levels might be utilized to access personality type by establishing the individual's 'functional preference order'.

The two visitors who participated in the following dialogues with us expressed an interest in both the 5-level theory and its implications, and the application of personality theory to cultural and organizational analysis of the type we have been doing.

One of the individuals, Lenore Thomson (Bentz), was formerly managing editor of "Quadrant: The Journal of Contemporary Jungian Thought". A book that she has written on the subject of type - entitled, "Personality Type: An Owner's Manual." - is about to be released by Shambala Publications.

In the early stages of the dialogue with Lenore, it occurred to John that the dialogue that was about to occur might best be presented at the new 'Community Forum' message board, so that it could be a 'work in progress' that you, the reader, would have an opportunity to directly participate in if you wish to do so. Lenore graciously consented to oblige us and conduct the conversation in this format. But it soon became apparent that the replies were getting too long for the message board, and we decided to reproduce the conversation here, in its entirety. For her contribution to a very stimulating dialogue - which has apparently only just begun, we are deeply grateful to her. This dialogue will be continued at the 'Community Forum'. If you are interested in joining the conversation, feel free to post a message there.

A Conversation with Lenore Thomson Bentz (9/98)

Lenore, formerly the managing editor of "Quadrant: The Journal of Contemporary Jungian Thought", has a Master of Divinity in Psychology and Religion and has spent over twenty-five years as an author and ghostwriter in the fields of theology and psychoanalysis. She taught courses on psychological types and pop culture at the C. G. Jung Foundation in New York. Her forthcoming book, entitled Personality Type: An Owner's Manual with a subtext that is the cultural analysis about which she speaks in this conversation.

After a brief exchange with us on other matters, Lenore mentions -

I look forward to a message board that's easy to use. I wrote a book on type that will be published by Shambhala next month, and one of my reasons for writing it was to show how the MBTI profile could be used in some of the same ways the Enneagram can -- for purposes of growth and change.
I don't mean that I specifically compared the two systems. That would have taken the book beyond the reach of a casual reader. I mean that I was concerned to talk about stages of functional development along the lines of disintegration and integration. So I'm very interested in what you've been doing with your 5 levels of functional maturity.
And interestingly enough, the subtext of the book is the kinds of societies that arise out of different type preferences. But, here, we disagree, I think because we've gone about the exploration in different ways.
I think the rising influence of the Perceptually-oriented pop culture has had an enormous influence on organizational norms -- to the point where traditional ideas about what makes for a good leader have changed considerably.
An information-saturated culture like ours no longer favors the hierarchically minded J manager who follows through on every project. It favors the team- oriented Perceiver who knows how to improvise, skim the surface, juggle multiple options and roles, and dispense with niggling details for the sake of the larger picture. The ETJ's inclination to assess, evaluate, and finish one project before starting another has come to seem inflexible and too perfectionistic a method for getting enough accomplished.
In consequence, many of our CEOs are now ETPs, and their moral perspective, shaped by individual experience, is quite different from the rule-driven one that ETJs maintain. Right this second, we've got a living, breathing Ji/Je dialogue going on in Washington, where an ENFP president, whose strength and charisma is derived from Fi idealism, is striving to meet the surface expectations of his J interrogators without being fully claimed by the categories of behavior those expectations reflect.
I look forward to an interesting dialogue...

John replies -

I find what you say about type and organization fascinating, and I look forward to reading your book!
Actually, I'm inclined to agree with much of what you say. Enneagram practitioners often take Ennea-types Three - the ES(F/T)P in MBTI terms - and Eight - the E(S/N)TJ - as the two types that fair best in business. Interestingly, many have now also identified the type Three, and not the Eight, as prototypical of our culture, and I have recently begun to think that they may have their fingers on a profound paradigm shift that is occurring.
This would seem to be consistent with what you are saying. My only problem with this is that I am not sure that the organizations themselves, or the upper echelons, will easily relinquish their ESTJ/Eightish, need to control. Noam Chomsky, for instance, sees the contemporary American corporation as highly non-democratic and hierarchical in nature and growing more so - despite what 'new paradigm' thinkers might wish. And there is a lot of statistical evidence (which we have presented in our paper on the subject) that demonstrates that as one goes up the corporate ladder, the concentration of ESTJs increases dramatically!
This, however, doesn't mean that the pattern that you are discerning isn't also there. Actually, I think it is there, and is reflected in our (Threeish) infatuation with celebrity, as well as in the way 'team-building' and other trends that you mention have emerged in organizational development. But maybe we are respectively pointing to different 'levels' of culture. For a while now Pat and I have been emphasizing 'nested frames' in our analysis of organizations (and their relation to type). Might it make sense to say that within a larger 'E(S/N)TJ' frame, a significant 'ES(F/J)P' groundswell is occuring?
I would love to pursue this conversation with you, but would like to do so in a manner that permits others to be privy to it, and to contribute. We are looking to seed a few interesting messages on the message board, messages that will be there when the board opens, and model the kind of serious discussion that we hope to encourage in that forum. It has just occurred to me that if you grant me permission, I could put up your message, under you name (starting with the second paragraph), and the above paragraph as a reply - and then we might proceed from there. What do you think?

Lenore -

Sure, go ahead. I'd be interested in how other people see this question, and it's very difficult to pursue it in type circles, where the focus is almost always on individual personality types.
If you don't mind, I'd like to comment on this now, because the question strikes me as important. My guess, from the way you're thinking this out, is that you're a P type yourself, with an idealized view of a P paradigm shift in the corporate arena. I don't hold that idealized view.
I DO believe that an appeal to Introverted Judgment (which is part and parcel of a Perceiving orientation) can and must call existing Extraverted Judging norms to account. But I don't believe that a moral perspective determined by Introverted Feeling can, of itself, shape a more humane organizational system. Introversion, by its nature, is part of a person's inner world, and it influences society indirectly, as people find ways to honor it in their individual behaviors -- and pay the price it exacts in their social relationships.
For example, the so-called Buffalo Soldiers were former slaves who had experienced first-hand the brunt of society's injustice. So when they were called upon to mistreat their Indian captives in the name of martial law, they balked. They KNEW in their senses, in their bones, in their heart of hearts that issues of common humanity transcend questions of collective law, and they were willing to pay the price for doing what they believed was fundamentally good (rather than what was socially right).
HOWEVER: When Introverted Judgment operates as a *social philosophy,* the results are very different. An appeal to something outside prevailing community law is not necessarily heard as an appeal to our common humanity, but as an appeal to the claims of individual desire. The idea arises that power systems are nothing more than institutionalized strategies for furthering some people's agendas and not others.
I was thinking very recently about the old Dobie Gillis show, which strikes me now as one of the first TV sitcoms to deal with the rising influence on cultural assumptions of the P attitude (represented by the frustrated Dobie, who aspired to status, cars, and women without having to work for them, and his nonconformist friend Maynard, to whom such possessions meant nothing).
From Dobie's perspective, the Judging world was divided into two factions: Js who have the power to make the rules (like the old-monied snobs he envies in Chatsworth Osborne, Jr.) and Js who follow the rules to support the people in power (like Dobie's long-suffering parents). Somewhere in between was the upwardly mobile Thalia Meninger, who kept pushing Dobie to improve his financial prospects.
The latest evolution of the same theme is writ exceptionally large in movies like "Titanic." The differences, however, are significant.
"Titanic's" fresh-faced hero, today's P representative, is still without resources, but he's not hapless or trying to get by with a minimum of effort. He's capable, spontaneous, generous of spirit, and knows exactly who he is: all the things a Perceiving-oriented society celebrates about itself.
The J representatives, on the other hand, are the same selfish, morally bankrupt, establishment creeps that Dobie envied, whose rules the poor, the devalued, and the service sector of society follow with prejudice. Molly Brown, the upwardly mobile character, is drawn more compassionately than the mercenary Thalia Meninger, but she's still helping our hero to better his social prospects.
The moral burden of the movie is carried by the young heroine, who, witness to her mother's abject dependence on wealthy patrons to retain her social power, rejects the J world altogether for the purity and nobility of an authentic life of the heart. Shades of Maynard G. Krebs.
This idealized P/J dichotomy has become a cliche over the last thirty years, but the message still has an enormous amount of marketing power. Consider "The Truman Show," "Forest Gump," or "Jerry Maguire."
Although such stories appear to pit a conscience trained by individual awareness of social injustice (Ji) against the generalized rules of society (Je), they aren't making the very reasonable point that laws and social values are a product of their place and time, and even the best of them become immoral if they're not continually informed by fundamental human needs. These movies suggest, rather, that a Je perspective inevitably results in unjust power relationships and is therefore morally indefensible, making individual experience the only legitimate arbiter of moral choice.
I would maintain that this is what you're seeing at the higher echelons of corporate power. Not the paradigmatic ideal of an egalitarian social structure, where all people are valued as contributors in their own way. And not a genuine J perspective either, but one contaminated by the idea that J structures are specifically designed to satisfy some people's desires and not others. We've all but lost the idea that Extraverted laws and values are a means of *transcending* individual desire for the sake of a civilized community.
Once you buy the idea that social structures are specifically designed to meet some people's needs at the expense of others', EVERY individual has grounds for experiencing himself as a victim, because there are always subjective needs that don't get met in the course of our social relationships. This conclusion doesn't create a willingness to sacrifice for the sake of a common human enterprise; it licenses the will do do whatever it takes to further a parochial agenda, at whatever cost to the (unjust) community at large.
As I say, I think the questions here are important, particularly because the terms we use to talk about them mean different things to different types. I should apologize, however, for running on, as INTJs are wont to do.

John replies -

Lenore, you say
'My guess, from the way you're thinking this out, is that you're a P type yourself, with an idealized view of a P paradigm shift in the corporate arena. I don't hold that idealized view.' But no, actually I'm not a 'P type'. I am an INFJ and I tend to exhibit many of the same kinds of reaction to 'P behavior' that other Js do. So I seriously doubt that I am 'idealizing' the 'P' view. It seems to me that it is you who are emphasizing the importance of the P/J distinction, and coming down rather strongly on the 'J' side. But I am reluctant to take this as an indication that you are 'idealizing' J-ness, as this might easily amount to an ad hominem argument based on type-associated preferences - ie, you are an INTJ, you strongly value J, hence I can dismiss your arguments regarding a current need in our culture to re-emphasize the desirability of those attitudes associated with J. I trust that this is not the kind of argument you intended, but as I have seen this kind of invalid argument often in type circles, I can't help mention it here. I'm sure you'd agree that it would be better if I were to encourage you to make the strongest arguments possible about the attitudes you believe to be currently wanting in our culture, and hope that I would have the objectivity to assess your conclusions not on the basis of your type preferences, but on the basis of your analysis.
You say, 'Perceptually-oriented pop culture has had an enormous influence on organizational norms', and I want to keep an open mind with respect to this hypothesis. As I mentioned, I think it has some merit. But for me, in fact, the P/J concept does not BY ITSELF go very far in helping us to understand our culture, or appreciate the most profound shifts that may be taking place within it.
I believe that something slightly different is afoot when it comes to the grandscale historical change that may (!) be taking place. Western culture has, for centuries, been guided by a paradigm that is predominantly a rational (T), empirical (S) one, with a distinctly 'extraverted' (E) and pragmatic (J) bias. There is not sufficient space here to explain my reasons for coming to this conclusion, but I would like to mention that many people have repeatedly made virtually the same point, in various diverse fields, although they may not have explicitly used 'type language' to do so. Look at the role that science has come to play in our culture since the enlightenment, for instance, and the kinds of science that still prevail as 'mainstream'. Or, alternatively, inspect the assumptions that we have about what a viable 'organization' is in our culture, and these should be operated. It is not insignificant that the 'science of management', in its inception, was synonymous with 'rational management'.
Insofar as E, S, T and J principles predominate in Western society, and are deeply embedded in our cultural values, is it really any wonder that the ESTJ is demographically the largest group in our society? Or that the organizational forms that ESTJs should 'prefer' (formally known as 'bureaucracies' in the literature of 'rational management') are those that reflect attitudes which, according to various sources, are embraced by the ESTJ - a belief in hierarchy, top-down decision making, centralized power, a need to assert control, enforce conformity, and so forth?
I would suggest that it is the ESTJ principles that have been put forward as the 'ideal' in Western culture for quite some time now - at least since the enlightenment. I would also humbly suggest that solutions to most of the chronic social problems of this century could possibly follow from a profound willingness to honor those functions and attitudes that have been most undervalued and misrepresented.
Yes, it is true the diametrially opposite I, N, F, and P values HAVE had their spokespersons - the Romantics, in the 19th century, for example, or the 'modern art movement' in the early part of the 20th century. And in the twentieth century, Jung himself expressed concern about the fact that feeling and intuition were seriously undervalued functions, and that this threatened a balanced, healthy society. But these voices (along with others that seem more 'establishment' to us these days - like Freud) were in fact NOT then, and are not now, the 'mainstream' view in most fields - including psychiatry and psychology, let alone the field of management. Indeed, as popular as these 'folk' psychologies were in their day, or continue to be today, they never gained prominence as the PREVAILING paradigm in Western institutions.
It is in this context that I place the 'Doby Gillis' show that you mention. Such parodies are fun, but it occurs to me that they can also be used to cheapen the real insights that the 'beat' poets had into the value of 'spontaneity' and 'process' in a characterologically rigid era. My favorite character, by the way, is the one you fail to mention - what was her name? Zelda? She was the one with a rather authentic and intelligently tom-boyish appeal, and an almost magical capacity to make Doby scrunch up his nose whenever she did, despite his conscious desire to resist.
It has been our experience (Pat and I) that many people, in comparing their own type to types that most radically differ from themselves (their so-called 'shadow' types), make the mistake of pitting the higher levels of development of their preferred functions to lower levels of development in the functions that they don't prefer. In our organizational consulting work, time and time again we have seen the thinking type argue that skill in 'strategic planning' is OBVIOUSLY more valuable to an organization than being able to 'follow mere hunches', or 'emote'. Feeling types will conversely argue that responding to the real needs of persons is more important than sticking to pre-fabricated 'plans'. And who can disagree with either proposition? The former comparison stacks the deck against the iNtuitive function and the feeling function, by comparing a fairly developed thinking function with an underdeveloped feeling function. And the latter does the opposite. In our indicator (the FD33), we experiment with putting this observation to work by asking individuals to choose between two equally true statements - one which compares a developed feeling function, for example, with an underdeveloped thinking function - and the other, which compares a developed thinking function with an underdeveloped feeling. It has been our experience that the thinking type is more apt to 'appreciate' the truth of the latter, while the feeling type can better relate to the former.
Our 'five level' theory of the functions has thus led us to conclude that insofar as it continues to be the I, N, F, and P principles that are seriously undervalued in our ESTJ world, it will be these that are most easily misconstrued. It would behoove us to create an environment in which these features of the human experience can be thoroughly explored, and realized to their fullest potential. We would suggest that first steps in this direction might include the developing of psychologies that are truly socio-spiritual - psychologies that honor N and F, at the 'highest' level of development of these functions - and also an exploration of organizational principles (such as participatory democracy) associated with the highest levels of development of the 'undervalued' functions. These principles are currently frowned on - for reasons that I would attribute primarily to ESTJ 'organizational bias'. As I said, I'd be willing to consider the proposition that P is giving J a run for its money, and that ESTP might be becoming the cultural 'prototype'.
In our on the subject we mention two eminent organizational development theorists who have concluded that 'bureaucracy', the form of social organization that prevails in Western society, is intimately associated with ST (and ESTJ) preferences. NFs, in contrast, apparently prefer what are called 'organic adaptive' forms of organization. And as far as we know, the that we cited back in '94 show that ESTJs are more than twice as frequent amongst CEOs than in the population at large, even though their frequency in the general population is already quite large! Do you have statistics that show that CEOs are now predominantly ESTPs?
Andrew Dinkelaker, a social ecologist and union organizer by trade, has convincingly argued that participatory democracy, guided by consensus decision-making principles, is the quintessential organic-adaptive form of social organization. He furthermore points out that it is rather unique in that it is designed to simultaneously optimize individual autonomy and social cohesion - which are often mistakenly believed to be mutually exclusive options. As such, participatory democracy affords human beings a form of organization that enables society to reach a stage of development that can be authentically called 'self-organizing' (in the sense in which contemporary scientists mean this term). I tend to agree with this analysis. Various individuals have separately argued that in addition to being the form of social organization that is the must just and fair, participatory democracy may also be the 1) most efficient, 2) the most responsive to environmental change, and 3) the best at engendering creativity. I would add that the diametrically opposite organizational forms (one's employing top-down decision-making and hierarchical power arrangements) are ideal mechanisms for usurping control over decision-making and maximizing individual power, and are often used to effect these ends. I'd also argue that the prevalence of this form of social organization in our society, and the fact that the two or three percent at the top of the social ladder have succeeded in hoarding a vast majority of the resources, is prima facie evidence that there actually is quite a lot of victimization going on. I generally don't buy the argument that most of those who complain about being victimized are crying wolf, and can just as easily entertain the proposition that those who accuse them of this may may be guilty of a tendency that sociologists call 'blaming the victim', which is typically associated with sadistic attitudes that derive from rigid character structure, inferior feeling and authoritarian personality.
You say -
'Once you buy the idea that social structures are specifically designed to meet some people's needs at the expense of others, EVERY individual has grounds for experiencing himself as a victim ...' Yes. Exactly. When forms of organization deprive us of our right to 'self-determination', we are victims. I'd submit that sensitivity to this kind of injustice does not lead to '[un]willingness to sacrifice for the sake of the common human enterprise', as you conclude, but to a demand for a fair and just form of social organization.
Like you, I look forward to the continuation of our dialogue. Thus far we seem only to have scratched the proverbial surface! And I'd still like to follow up on the ESTP Enneagram-3 link.