Introverted Intuition. The most mystical of all the cognitive functions. Probaly the hardest function to define or describe because it is
- A Perceiving function
- An introverted function
- It’s intuitive!
And indeed, what do people mean when they say “It’s just my intuition. That’s how I know.”
Yes, you just know. Or you don’t.
That seems to be a way to define introverted intuition.
With Perceiving functions, you either see it or you don’t. There is little more to say about them, in a sense.
This presents less of a problem with the Sensation function, because, let’s face it, we’re living in a material world. Well, most of us are anyway.
So, in a sense (ha), the sensation function is the easiest function to grasp. It’s like “You see all that shit out there? OK, that’s the world.” Case closed.
And so I find that this is one of the best ways to understand introverted intuition – from the perspective of the sensation function, it’s natural opposite.
An introverted sensor will say something like “You see that chair over there? Yeah, the brown chair with 4 legs. Can you bring it over here so I can
- Park my fat ass on it
- Lay you across it and whip you with my leather belt
- Reupholster it
- All of the above
There is a couple of things we’ll notice about what the introverted sensor is noticing in regards to this aspect of physical reality (the chair)
- The qualitative aspects of it (brown, 4 legs)
- The functional aspects of it (as a seat, a place of punishment, or a thing that is in need of repair)
By turns, when an introverted intuitive looks at this same chair, they are likely to
- Look through it and thus not notice its aspects at all
- If noticed, they are likely to write a mental note to themselves to never notice this ugly brown chair ever again
UNLESS
- This chair is standing in for something else that is not physically present and is thus A SYMBOLIC OBJECT.
Yes, that gets an introverted intuitive all perked up. Symbols.
And anything can be a symbol.
Take this brown chair that we have been discussing.
That chair could be sensed by an introverted intuitive as a symbol of all that is ugly and oppressive in existence.
Then this chair might assume a suddenly profound significance to them.
They might drop everything they were doing that day to ponder the significance of this chair.
Meanwhile, the introverted sensor will think the introverted intuitive has lost their mind.
But see, all is right and proper in the respective perspectives of these two introverted perceivers.
An introverted sensor is only interested in the physical object for its own sake.
An introverted intuitive is only interested in the physical object as a symbol of some other thing, preferably some other thing that is not tangible, like ugliness or oppression.
Ugliness or oppression are states of being.
A chair in and of itself means nothing.
MEANING.
That is the fundamental keyword of introverted intuition.
If something has no meaning to an introverted intuitive, then, it has no existence.
The whole physical world with all its objects and peoples are nothing to an introverted intuitive unless they can extract MEANING from it.
Unless they can figure out what it means. Like, for reals.
And that’s it, really.
It might seem all confusing and nebulous this introverted intuitive function.
It’s no more confusing than what meaning is.
What is meaning?
What does it mean when things mean things?
I mean, meaning is kind of weird when one gets into what it really means.
We talk about meaning all the time, but, what is it?
Well, it’s what introverted intuition is looking for…and perceiving.
While other people are perceiving chairs and tables and doors and blonde-haired girls and mice and men and so on, introverted intuitives are looking through all that shit to extract meaning.
What do chairs mean? Why do blonde-haired girls exist?
Basically, it comes down to “justify your existence”. Why do you need to exist? Why does anything at all need to exist?
Why?
Why, why, why?
And when I speak of existence, I mean existence in the physical world. That’s the question that introverted intuition has. Why does this x thing/person/whatever need to exist in physical incarnation?
And the only answer that is acceptable to an introverted intuitive as to why x thing/person/blonde-haired girls needs to exist in physical incarnation is because it is standing in for something else.
In other words, because it exists as a symbol.
Thus, its meaning is whatever it is standing in for/symbolizing.
And once the introverted intuitive knows what something means, then they may go about their merry way.
Because all these things better not be existing for their own sake. A chair better not just be a chair. And that table better not just be a table. And that blonde-haired girl definitely better not just be a blonde-haired girl.
And so all of existence just exists for the introverted intuitive to penetrate into and find out its meaning.
That’s all it’s interested in.
Meanwhile, this is EXACTLY what the introverted sensor is not only NOT interested in, but, fears.
To an introverted sensor the thought a chair means anything beyond what it appears to be (esthetically and functionally) is terrifying.
It means something? It symbolizes something that isn’t tangible? It symbolizes something that I can’t see, hear, taste, touch, or smell?
Get ready for a trip to the loony bin.
Yes, that chair is a snake.
No, that chair is freedom on 4 legs.
That chair is the air that I breathe.
And that table is the afterthought of the clouds that linger long over it.
See, introverted sensors don’t want to be hearing none of that talk.
They rather you told them that chair is a typical specimen of the breed. It dates to around the 1850’s in the Pinewood Valley Lakota Indian people. The chair was made out of alabaster, birch, and mahogany intitially, but then gradually they started making the chairs out of more homely materials like chinawapawawa due to the drying up of the natural resources in this region starting with the Great Locust Invasion of 1886.
It was at this point that the Lakota moved a little further westward where they discovered natural mesas and plateaus from which they could begin carving their lovely matching tables to go with the brown chinawapawawa chairs. The tables were carved out of the finest granite that this more western region had to offer and to round it all off they decided to go even further West into the Great and Venerable Valleys and extract blonde-haired girls from this notable region to sit at their finely crafted granite tables in the chinawapawawa chairs.
This of course led to the famed selling craze of these table and chair sets soon after.
And this brings us up to present day.
So, please bring me that brown chair with the 4 legs over there so I can paddle your ass into oblivion.
Case closed.
Featured Photo Credit: By Chris Jimenez from CR (Bare-shanked Screech-Owl) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
this blood red sofa sweating feathers from its pours is a symbol for battered attachments and mindless comfort at the cost of freedom and flight. the gravitational pull to a raft going nowhere, catotonia, indulgence, and gluttony…
In mant ways this article perfectly sums up my estrangement, my mind alienating itself through the simple act of existing, might I say, tangibly. Even more so it sums up the differences between my best friend and me. He’s an ENTP that has some strange Si manifestation, as if his outer most layers are that of an SJ. His ID would be ESTJ, so I suppose that makes sense. It’s always the object first and foremost with him, how it’s made, how it can be improved.
I’ve realized there are What/How people and there are Who/Why people, and then some cross over such as Who/How, ect.. So many oppositions in the way people exist.
I’m thrilled you finally wrote an article honing in on Ni a bit, it’s remained such an elusive topic here even though INFJs are at the epicenter.
First comment on this article, and my first ever… Thanks!
Yeah, that’s true, I haven’t really written about introverted intuition that much. I wonder why. What’s the meaning of this?
Congratulations on making your first comment ever here!
Maybe that explains why with Ni id, I find it highly distressing when someone is talking but for the life of me I’m not able to experience them or the interaction as more than a shroud. I want to experience them as THERE— a tangible exchange like the tangible chair. Just recently went through the motions with a family member, but we weren’t really there. It is a panic. I could only see an impression of very detailed needs and weakness asserting power wearing a conventional costume and she if we all buy it she is fine with heaping burdens upon herself because we will all have to continue playing the parts we assented to. And it’s nightmarish because hello, calling Earth, and why so distorted. Why can’t I just see this sweet woman being so kind and helpful, and enjoy the receiving. And then tangibly offer something back. Tangible.
“That chair is the air that I breathe.
And that table is the afterthought of the clouds that linger long over it.”
Your poetry brightens and questions my otherwise mute day.
Yesterday I spoke of Ni, of fences that are fear and I and we and you and them and castles that are fathers and caves that are mothers and gates that are the difference between possible death and enterprise. I didn’t post it because… why?
If I speak, I open the gate. The tiger can wander in to eat and the toddler wander out to play. If I don’t speak, I starve huddled, and no one rips me apart, but me.
Silence and speaking are death every way.
Hammocks are time. Swinging questions.
Why is slipping, dripping through my fingers, unholdable, unspeakable, undoing.
Effort keeps sinking. Too heavy. Stop. Shhh.
Try again.
Try again.
Try again.
Yes, yes, this is all well and good. But please, let’s get to the meaning of blonde-haired chairs
Jesus, Tom! What kinda sick shit are you into?
It is my belief that introverted intuition is simply direct perception of reality as it really is, because what is reality really? What is existence? What is existing? My subjective experience, it is something more than material, and it is true. There is nothing else that can be true. Ni directly apprehends symbol which is a higher (prior) level of existence than material. Consciousness is the bedrock, the axiom, of reality: https://thepsychedelicscientist.com/2017/02/13/solving-the-hard-problem-with-idealism/
While Ni is direct perception of Truth, one can fail to understand it or misinterpret it. It is true because it came to you, but you can be wrong about it or you can be in denial. Ni can make you see the bones of existence (“Why?”) but it can’t help you be honest in spirit.
Introverted intuition aims at the ‘because’ of things. For an Ni to know ‘what’ something is you have to know the ‘why’. The ‘causal’ link which gives substance/meaning/definition to the part. Ni at its bare minimum is what we know as ‘dialectical’. Parts are parts of greater parts, etc.
Blake or anyone else here, can you please briefly explain to me how extroverted intuition would perceive the chair? I struggle to understand Ne… Thanks.
What chair? 🙂
Hahahaha… good (true) one.
But, please! At some point, elaborate further on the elusive Ne function…
Not a fan of Ni? Got it.
Got what? What did you get? Where can I get some?
lmao
as someone who accidentally found this site (and subscribed kinda ambivalently), reading some of the stuff here strikes me as the writing you would find on the walls of an insane asylum
i guess that is what Ni is
as someone with dom Ti, it seems that some of the claims you make are unjustified, unreliable and occasionally pulled out of your ass. but holy shit they are so compelling at the same time
looking forward to reading more 🙂
reading some of the stuff here strikes me as the writing you would find on the walls of an insane asylum
I could see that.
i guess that is what Ni is
Yeah, that’s actually a pretty good definition 🙂
Because if you see writing on the walls of an insane asylum, it’s almost guaranteed to be Ni-generated.
as someone with dom Ti, it seems that some of the claims you make are unjustified, unreliable and occasionally pulled out of your ass.
Well, yeah…
but holy shit they are so compelling at the same time
It’s like you keep finishing my sentences for me 🙂
looking forward to reading more 🙂
Indeed. Nice conclusion 🙂
If you are writing on walls of insane asylum bound to be Ni generated….
Don’t even know what that means but made me laugh so hard
Yep holy shot they are compelling….makes one salivate…
Humm so maybe Ni – the function that births art objects. And Si’s dismiss them as curious/frivolous craft……?