I was reading Leonore Thomson last night (I concur with ENTP mod, she’s a genius about MBTI) and she said the extrovert can reach their midlife years without realizing their imbalances, operating entirely on the strength of their dominant and/or their dominant tertiary function before they reach a crisis, whereas the introvert MUST develop their auxilery function almost immediately in order to have any kind of conscious interaction with the outside world. The reason being that the extrovert’s focus is already on the external world, so unless they focus on conscious development of their auxiliary function, they may be out of touch with it for decades. The introvert, having a focus on Self, has no choice but to develop their first extroverted function. But many of them stay in their own heads, resist that development, and choose to try and balance their dominant out with their inferior function instead – which causes problems.
What this means, in answer to your ask, is that whenever you see a strong pair of extroverted functions in an extrovert, you are likely seeing an absence of auxiliary functional development. I face this problem myself almost continually – I have strong Ne and strong Te, but find it hard to stop thinking about everyone else and fixing their needs in order to decide for myself what I want. I’m so used to putting my feelings aside to make rational, practical Te-driven decisions that I am out of touch with my Fi. I’ll give you an example. I knew from a young age I had no interest in romantic relationships or marriage, but society has such a strong emphasis on pairing off, I have tried two separate times to “give it a go.” I wound up with so much anxiety, since I knew this was fundamentally wrong for myself, that I broke out in hives that lasted for months, even though I had found a really nice guy. I was ignoring what my Fi has always known is true for me, and chasing after external solutions to my 6ish anxiety (fear of doing life alone).
The introverts that go without aux development, on the other hand, are too self-isolating and self-absorbed. Instead of the extrovert problem of “I don’t know what I want / foresee / need because I am busy responding to the environment,” they get locked into their heads.
You also run into the opposite problem, where people develop the first function and the second to cope with the first, but never work on strongly developing the third. I see this most often in IXFJ types whose weaker Ti doesn’t seek out any information that doesn’t support what they want to feel / believe is right. They wind up more emotional and less rational than they could be, if they learned to detach, step back, and analyze their situation rather than reacting to it. You also see this in extroverts who are detached from their tert function – the EXFP who is completely selfish 24/7 or the EXTP who doesn’t see the point in being nice to anyone, or the EJ who is all about their dom/aux with no lower openness. In a nutshell, there’s a lot of ways people can mess up their development.
The auxiliary function is the rudder that makes the ship go in the right direction. Without it, the TITANIC is going to hit the iceberg. Sooner or later.
- ENFP Mod
