Author: Aushra Augusta
From Theory of Intertype Relations
Disclaimer: Augusta’s description of this intertype relation is very long, and this page does not contain it in its entirety.
Benefactor (requester / inductor) -> Beneficiary (recipient)
Beneficiary (recipient) -> Benefactor (requester / inductor)
The relations in which experience and social request get transferred are at the base of the psychic mechanism of social progress. These relations perform two functions:
- transfer the experience accumulated and consciously comprehended by some types of IM to other types of IM;
- create social request, i.e. identify the unfulfilled needs of some types of IM in order to turn these needs into other types’ social interests, correcting and directing the activity of the latter types in a particular way.
By their objective significance these relations can only be compared to the symmetric relations of duality. The relations of duality help the individual develop psychological resilience, or psychological immunity. The relations of request* provide them with humanity’s most advanced experience and facilitate the mobilization of the most developed elements of each person’s psyche, so that these elements can be used in accordance with the needs of society.
* Relation of social request = benefit. Hereinafter the asterisks (*) indicate the translator’s notes.
From the perspective of the theory of IM, the emergence of new ideas follows a certain sequence. First, one type of IM begins having some needs that they are not entirely conscious of, but that are clearly unfulfilled and lead to irritation or confusion. The individual themself perceives this as psychological discomfort and maladjustment; in reality this is them not knowing how to act in a socially novel situation, the situation whose novelty this individual does not understand because, due to the type of their intelligence, they lack some information or some social freedoms. This is the emergence of a social problem that turns into a social request for the intelligence that comes next in the social ring. The mechanism of transfer of experience and social request activates when the inductor’s* discomfort reaches the recipient’s consciousness. The fulfilled social request enriches society with something new, but this novelty is understood by the next recipient rather than society at large: society rejects this novelty or does not consider it actively enough, but the individual will take it as a request.
* Inductor = benefactor, recipient = beneficiary.
When we speak of the transfer of experience, the experience in question can come from a specific person; this kind of transfer is necessary for the daily development of society. However, it can also be general social experience, which is needed for the development of science, technology, art, politics etc.
A novel idea cannot materialize immediately. One person develops a need; another gains a conscious understanding of it, responds and finds a solution for the problem; the third implements this solution. Each type of intelligence fulfills its own part of the social request – the social function of its intelligence. Each individual only responds to that which is related to their type. It becomes clear why new ideas are not accessible to everyone: when someone proclaims something novel, their type of IM determines the type of those people who will be able to understand it.
The four rings are a simple and reliable way of turning the needs and problems of all types of IM into a system of social requests. It is a “driving force of progress” which makes it so that different facets of the same request are fulfilled and controlled not by one, but by four rings acting in parallel. This ensures that each type of IM takes an active part in social progress, i.e. in the creation and implementation of new ideas.
Social request is an assignment that is truly social rather than individual. We cannot say that the inductor consciously issues the request – rather, what the recipient perceives as a request is the discomfort their inductor encounters during the fulfillment of their own life program. The time that passes between the emergence of the social request and the appearance of the person or persons to fulfill it varies. Other things being equal, the more mobile a given society is and the more educated people it has, the quicker the novel is spread – the possibility for people to come into contact with each other is increased, and the speed with which the social request gets transmitted is increased as well. This is why the emergence and development of trade relations and commodity production was not just an economic prerequisite for the societal development – it also made the society more mobile, contributing to the creation of a communicative environment in which it is easier for each inductor to find a recipient and the law of social progress functions more effectively.
The social nature of the request also manifests in the fact that the requester does not directly benefit from its fulfillment. For it to become possible to use the novel, this novel should pass through the entire ring of the transfer of experience and reach the requester from the other side. The requester can only observe the fate of what they started with more or less satisfaction. Yet, even this is relative, because no one truly starts anything, they merely continue it*.
* Here Augusta probably means that, since the relation of benefit (or request) forms rings, no type can be the “starting point” of it. Everyone is influenced by their benefactor, and a social request issued by an individual is something that emerges during their own attempts to fulfill their benefactor’s request. Thus, each social request is a continuation of the request that came before it (for instance, the ILE’s request to the EIE is a continuation of the LSE’s request to the ILE).
The recipient perceives the psychological discomfort of their inductor as a request because the inductor is seen as socially valuable, or as someone who performs particularly valuable functions. The recipient identifies their inductor with society, and the inductor’s needs – with the needs of society. For each individual society begins with their inductor. This can be illustrated by numerous examples. It is widely known how much Jean-Jacques Rousseau [IEI] influenced Robespierre [LII] or Kant [LII]. From the perspective of the theory of IM the former was the inductor, and the latter – the recipient. Alfred Adler [EIE], the first psychoanalyst to immediately become seriously interested in the ideas of Karl Marx [ILE], was also the latter’s recipient.
The inductor’s abilities inspire respect in their recipient; even their posture commands respect. When the inductor shares some information the recipient already knows, to the recipient it feels deeper, more significant and multifaceted. And when the inductor discovers something new, the recipient perceives it as something that had long been expected*.
* This is probably trying to convey that to the beneficiary it seems as though it is just a matter of time before their impressive benefactor makes some kind of discovery.
The recipient acknowledges their inductor, sympathizes with them, helps them, makes concessions to them, feels sorry for them. They do this even when not asked, because they see their inductor as fragile. The recipient always feels as though they are a little indebted to their inductor, and so they try to acommodate them. The recipient makes concessions while being unaware of it.
Differences in the intelligence and cultural levels of their surrounding inductors (i.e. these inductors living in different social times) have little impact on the recipients’ attitude towards them. The recipients still try to obtain something, like recognition and attention, from each of their inductors, and they try to help them in some way.
In the ring of social request the recipient is higher than their inductor, and for the inductor it is hard to make sense of this fact. This is why the inductor does not fully understand their recipient: everything related to the recipient’s affairs tends to merge into one generalized whole. It may surprise the inductor, but does not allow them to see the problem. In this way the inductor is different from their recipient, who does fully understand them (as they would not be able to receive the inductor’s request otherwise). The recipient sees their inductor’s ideas in a more differentiated way than they themself do. You could say the recipient continues the inductor’s ideas in their mind when they see them*.
* Lit. “sees with continuation”.
Since the inductor has a poor understanding of the intricacies of the recipient’s affairs, they naturally form an impression that their recipient does everything effortlessly, with exceptional ease. To their inductor the recipient’s entire life seems way less difficult than the lives of other people, which, perhaps, is partially because the recipient is almost always attentive and available to their inductor. (According to our observations, the recipients who are familiar with intertype relations try to reduce the number of such unproductive interactions.*)
* Or “unproductive connections”.
Some recipients do also get treated with a certain gentleness by their inductors. However, this is because the inductor sees their recipient as someone who is strong, but wastes their energy and themself in vain – as opposed to the recipient, who values and treats their inductor gently due to seeing them as important for society, but not strong enough, or even fragile.
The individual cannot remain calm and unaffected by what their inductor is programming in them. It invigorates them, stirs them up, emboldens them. That which comes from their inductor “awakens” the recipient and makes them aware of their own strength. What awakens in them is their social nature and their sense of duty to society. People get included in the cycle of fulfilling social requests.
The task of the social request is assigned in a way that makes is hard, and even unthinkable, to decline. The specific reason for this suggestiveness is in the fact that the recipient is not perceiving the information “in general”, but rather the information from the inductor’s developed [creative] function, which is directed at the recipient’s [suggestive]. Because of this, this information is never “ordinary”, something that goes in one ear and out the other. It sinks into the psyche just as deeply as the information received from the dual or activator. But the information exchange with one’s dual or activator works fully in both directions, which is not the case here: the information received by the inductor is relatively vague and indistinct, since it comes from the recipient’s [vulnerable] function. It could be said that in the relations of the transfer of social experience and request the information directed at the recipient has just as much weight as in duality, but the information directed at the inductor is just as unconvincing as in [quasi-identity]. To the inductor it appears subjective and therefore not particularly important. When the relation is symmetric, both sides evaluate the information they receive from each other equally: either as objective and provable, or as subjective, something that can be believed or disbelieved, but cannot be proven.
It is very easy to determine which of the two people is the inductor and which is the recipient by observing their behavior during an argument. […] The inductor does not understand or grasp the recipient’s arguments: they feel unconvincing and uninformative, the signals do not carry the information they would in other relations. The recipient feels that their words are falling on deaf ears and their arguments are unconvincing, even if they are talking about a topic they are well versed in. As a result, the recipient is forced to either stop talking or flare up. […] The recipient is the only one who feels an unpleasant sting, but the inductor is also unhappy: first they are being told something vague, and then the other person gets offended as well. From the outside it seems as though the inductor is on top, and the recipient either has a very surface level understanding of the subject, or is simply unstable. However, the inductor’s composure evaporates the moment they encounter their own inductor in a similar situation. When it comes to the relations with their recipients, conceited composure is characteristic of all inductors. The inductor is always right, even when the argument is about something the recipient is better versed in. After all, it is not the inductor’s fault that the recipient’s reasoning is “unconvincing”, that they always make the “wrong” arguments.
To this we can add that the recipient’s aggressiveness is something the inductor does not really understand either. This aggressiveness is also unconvincing and the inductor barely pays any attention to it, brushes it off. This is because the inductor never feels guilty before their recipient and sees no reason for compunction. They do not understand why the recipient is angry at them, and do not even believe that the recipient is actually angry. Perhaps this equanimity is one of the reasons why the recipient is unable to actually get angry – or, at least, it seems that the equanimity is the cause and not the effect.
The only reason the recipient can and does independently continue the inductor’s work beyond the inductor’s own understanding is in the fact that the recipient’s intellectual functions* are free from the inductor’s control and are not understood by them. But what about the [suggestive] function, which the inductor does control? All our observations show that the recipient can only achieve real freedom and fulfill the social request when their [suggestive] function is freed from the inductor’s influence. This occurs when the recipient distances themself from their inductor to create a “safe distance”, sometimes against the inductor’s will. If the recipient fails to achieve this, instead of fulfilling the social request they become the inductor’s mere satellite or vassal. It is impossible to act independently in front of one’s inductor, who, due to the features of their own type of IM, does not understand the recipient’s working methods.
* It is most likely that in this context “intellectual functions” refer to the recipient’s lead and creative, which are the inductor’s mobilizing and ignoring, i.e. vital. In the same work Augusta refers to the Ego as the “intellectual block”.
Any dissatisfaction from the inductor is a request. However, this dissatisfaction can be directed at one of the people around the recipient, or it can be directed at the recipient themself. Only the former creates social request – when the inductor’s dissatisfaction is directed at the recipient, it makes the recipient disconcerted at the very least. If they have to act under their inductor’s watch, this happens constantly.
In general, the recipient perceives their inductor’s semi-conscious signals [from the position of a child*] in two ways:
* “Child” is one of the three ego-states described by Eric Berne’s transactional analysis, other two being “parent” and “adult”. Augusta referenced it in her Theory of Intertype Relations to describe the tendencies in communication. Specifically, she wrote that when people communicate information from their leading or creative functions, they act from the “adult” position; when they communicate their vulnerable, the position is “parent”; and, finally, seeking information on the suggestive happens from the “child” position: “it is a search for someone with a complementary psychological type, someone who sees the side of the individual’s life struggles that the individual themself neither understands nor sees“. The inductor “sending semi-conscious signals from the position of a child” means that the inductor is seeking information on their suggestive, a process which is not conscious due to the suggestive being vital.
- If it is possible to see the problem behind the inductor’s words, the recipient enters the relation of social request, receives the request and begins fulfilling it;
- If the inductor’s words contain at least a little bit of nervousness directed at the recipient themself, the latter perceives it as a sharp and undeserved reprimand from the position of a parent who neither wants nor tries to be fair, and who, even knowing full well about the recipient’s attachment to them, allows themself to abuse this attachment with impunity.
Example. The intuitive-logical extrathyme (
) is rummaging through their bookshelves in search of the needed book, while grumbling about how it is impossible to ever find anything.
What do these words mean to the ILE’s dual, the sensoric-ethical introthyme (
)? What the SEI hears is a complaint about how their partner never remembers anything, and so they rush to help with the search. Both are happy. The ILE is happy because they have a partner who knows everything and is skilled at everything, while the SEI is happy because they managed to improve their spouse’s mood.
The ILE’s recipient, the ethical-intuitive extrathyme (
), reacts to the same comment with “I never touch your books”. They perceived the ILE’s words as a criticism of someone touching and arranging their belongings. However, this response would only be correct and soothing for the EIE’s dual, the logical-sensoric introthyme (
), who hates when someone else touches their things. This is why the EIE suits the LSI – the EIE never organises anyone’s belongings, including their own. On the contrary, the ILE needs someone else to be able to manage their possessions better than they themself can.
As a result, the recipient feels like everything is their fault. They perceive the inductor’s words as accusations from someone who relied on them and was deceived. And the problems in question are little, trivial things, making this deceit even more stupid and unpleasant. It never occurs to the recipient that their inductor acts from the position of a whining child who just wants to be soothed, and that most often their seeming complaint does not require any response. The reason for this is the recipient’s exaggerated, suggestive perception of all signals from their inductor.
A lot of things about the recipient are strange and attractive to their inductor. The inductor cannot comprehend a portion of the recipient’s activity, i.e. the realization of the latter’s first two functions*, despite finding it remarkable**. The recipient can easily handle a task their inductor finds difficult or even impossible, and yet they fail at something the inductor considers perfectly easy, only requiring goodwill and some attention rather than effort. It is hard to imagine that someone who genuinely wanted to learn could be incapable of grasping something so easy. The bewildered inductor comes to the conclusion that the recipient only does things that align with their own desires and whims. The only reason the recipient is unable to do something is that they “do not want to think”, “refuse to focus”, etc. It is because they are irresponsible, spoiled, capricious, because they prefer the activities they find more interesting to those that are more important from the inductor’s perspective, because they are unable or unwilling to take other people’s affairs into account. The inductor feels obligated to address all of this in some way. While this type of response is absolutely correct in dual relations, one should never act the same way towards their recipient, who perceives it as pronounced disapproval rather than correction. It frustrates and completely paralyzes the recipient’s activity.
* Leading and creative.
** Or “surprising”.
Classic Socionics 