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This page will contain my thoughts on optimal socionics terminology. For now, here is what I wrote over a year ago.

[edit] Terminology

Currently (Sept. 17, 2007) I am talking to Ukrainian and Russian socionists at the annual socionics conference to get a better sense for the best terminology available. The International Institute of Socionics basically had to make a unilateral decision which terminology to use in their publications, and had to correct articles for many years. Now, most people are used to their rules. The IIS is arguably the most theoretically careful and precise socionics entity around, and Kiev socionists in general have given the most attention to methodological and philosophical issues in socionics. Here are some things I will be discussing with them:

• which is more appropriate: "introvert" or "introtim"?
• type or TIM?
• what is the best word for "IM element"? (it turns out "function" seems to be the preferred term so far)
• what is the best word for "information aspect"? (Kiev seems to prefer "aspect of information stream" for maximum clarity)
• what is the best term for _____ 1-8 in Model A? (it turns out the word "function" is mostly used for No. 3, and where only the number is meant, "position of Model A" or "function number" or something like that is preferred)
• if editors have other questions, please add them here

It turns out the Kiev school has already put a lot of effort and thought into uniting terminology, so I will try to learn from their experience. A number feel that Jung's terms "feeling" and "thinking" are more appropriate than "ethics" and "logic," which were added for insufficiently clear reasons.

I have also encountered a number of socionists who don't really clearly understand the difference between     in the head, so to speak, and     in reality outside the psyche, and tend to call them the same thing. The wisest socionists I have talked to agree that it is incorrect to call the second the same term as the first (i.e. "extraverted logic"). "Extraverted logic" is a process/trait/conglomerate within the psyche; to say that "extraverted logic" is a kind of information is incorrect.

The Kiev school considers information aspects to be an objective part of reality and has developed this part of the theory quite a bit, although little is known about this work in English.

At the conference, there have been some interesting debates about the Reinin traits and their place in socionics that I will discuss at some point here. I have short videos and pictures of many of the speakers so far.

Also, I bought a thick book on the foundation of socionics written for professional socionists by a scientist/philosopher/socionist here. The book very carefully investigates the entire theoretical foundation of socionics, how things are explained differently by different socionists, etc. etc. The book is very promising and insightful and goes quite a bit deeper than other literature available. I expect to reference it frequently in the future in discussing difficult theoretical issues. It's called "The Cheshire Cat's Smile, or the Possible and the Impossible in Socionics" (author Churyumov).