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The Socionics Community


The socionics community in the former Soviet Union.
In the Russian speaking socionics community there is a core group of socionics professionals (maybe 100-200 total) who work individually or in small groups of 2, 3, or 4 people and try to earn money on socionics by giving lessons, publishing, and/or consulting. These are the people whose books and articles we read and whom we go to for type identification. Around them are students of varying levels, some of whom have aspirations to make a "career" in socionics as well. Beyond them are much larger numbers of people who have read about socionics, go to socionics clubs and hang-outs, have attended socionics classes at some point in the past and like to discuss it with friends, etc., but without any intention of ever becoming professionals. For these people, socionics mostly serves a social function and provides a common language and interest to meet people and talk about things. "Socionists," or publishing socionics professionals, generally appear as the result of an intense preoccupation with socionics that leads them to a personalized, unique understanding of socionics. A smaller number of socionists became professionals by following in a teachers' footsteps within the system created by the teacher, but these are the minority.

Is there a socionics community in the West?
As we can see, there are currently no "native" socionics professionals in the West, despite the several hundred active discussion participants at forums like the16types.info. It takes an average of about five years (my estimate) to mature into a publishing socionist, and today's recognized socionists in the English speaking world (Sergei Ganin, Dmitri Lytov, and I) all studied socionics within the Russian speaking community and remain more a part of that community than the online English speaking socionics community. Among western "natives," there are not yet any people who are confident enough of their knowledge to begin publishing original materials. They are still busy compiling, discussing, and suggesting hypotheses.

Stages to becoming a community
Socionics appeared, developed, and matured primarily as the result of open-ended, synergetic group analysis and discussion. Such a group existed for over a decade in Vilnius and was led by Aushra Augusta — the most active participant and initiator. Another such group appeared later in Kiev and was dominated by the Bukalov-Gulenko tandem. In Vilnius and Kiev, this synergetic stage is long past. Today's "socionics club" in Kiev lacks the creative impulse and lively interest it once had, and the city of Vilnius has almost completely disappeared off the socionics map. It's possible the creative impulse is being carried on elsewhere in distant places. The result of synergetic processes is always something new and unforeseen. Today the focus seems to be more on applying socionics and ironing out details.

Is there "synergy" in western socionics?
This is hard to answer. On the one hand, there is a lot of serious discussion on the16types.info forum — more serious than on most Russian language forums. This is probably because there are no alternative places to talk about socionics. On the other hand, I am skeptical about the possibility of achieving qualitative progress in understanding and applying socionics over the Internet. The creative groups that gathered in Vilnius and Kiev had the chance to check new hypotheses immediately and revise their ideas and arrive at a common understanding with the help of shared observations. Online discussion communities do not have this option. Even the active online communities in Russia and Ukraine are actually centered around real-life meetings, after which they continue to discuss topics online. For the western socionics community to solidify — in my opinion — a group or groups of enthusiasts must appear who meet together and discuss things in real time. As soon as such a group appears, its quality of discussion and investigation will quickly leave the online forums behind.

Will "western" socionics develop independently of the East?
This remains to be seen. It is not clear yet whether western socionics will experience a synergetic stage of development similar to Vilnius and Kiev, or wait for "teachers" from the Russian speaking world to come and create a community themselves. This second scenario seems more likely, since the western community is behind the eastern in experience and understanding and is more interested in catching up than in developing on its own. After it catches up, however, other scenarios are possible.



09/24/2006 Expat
Not to be too pessimistic, but if you think that socionics groups in the west can only really develop from real-life meetings, then it's not going to happen anytime soon -- the enthusiasts are too thinly spread geographically, so it will be hard to build "critical mass" for real-life meetings.
10/01/2006 Author
All it takes is one stable group of three people or more (maybe even two) that starts meeting and working together towards a common goal and understanding somewhere, even if their real-life meetings are sporadic. Such a group could start up in Seattle, in London, in Munich — wherever. Because socionics deals with subjective things like relationships and behavior, people need to meet to make sure they are talking about the same thing and to build common points of reference.