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| Poor Shaun (from the film Shaun of the Dead) |
Sodalities, along with the houses, are another way of organizing the types, one with enormous potential for growth. The word is used by social anthropologists to refer to “a non-kin group organized for a specific purpose (economic, cultural, or other), and frequently spanning villages or towns”. It’s commonly used in the Christian church to refer to groups of individuals working towards the same goal, whether spiritual devotion or good works. Where the Houses are one’s “family” or kin (the four types that share the same conscious functions, e.g. Te, etc.), the Sodalities are our “jobs,” or where we do the work of psychological growth. They are the four groups consisting of the four types that share the same complexes (e.g. INTP, ESFJ, ENTJ, ISFP). Each type in the sodality all share the same four complexes, just in different positions, just like how each of the types shares the same 8 functions, just in different function roles.
This is going to be a fairly technical and abstract article; it’s purpose is to provide an understanding of the structure of the sodalities, where they come from, why they are important, things like that. If this isn’t something that interests you that’s fine, I'm going to do a later post on the practical applications of the core complexes and how to use them. You may, however, want to go down to the section where I give an example using a movie to show how the complexes work within a sodality (“Example: Shaun of the Dead”).
Functional vs. dynamic relationships
Functional relationships refer to relations between types that share structural similarities, as in the houses for example (i.e., all four types share the same functions). An example of a functional relationship is Mirror Types. Types with mirror relationships have opposite heroine functions, e.g. thinking vs. feeling, but share the same attitude, e.g. Ti and Fi. In addition, they share the same parent and child functions. INTPs and INFPs have Ti and Fi as their dominant functions respectively, but both share Ne parent and Si child. Their similarities – dominant introverted judging, and their shared Ne/Si “arms” – make them similar in many ways. For example, both INTPs and INFPs have Se trickster, which makes them prone to run into things and generally struggle with physical reality.
Dynamic relationships, on the other hand, may or may not share functions but, more importantly, relations between these types drive conflict and growth. An example of a dynamic relationship is Attraction Types. These types do actually have the same four functions but in the reverse order of each other. Another name for these is “antipodal types” as they are opposite each other on the MBTI. When immature or unhealthy we tend to reject this type, but people of normal or better psychological development usually find this antipodal type to be very attractive. If all goes well, we usually manage to integrate this type naturally and fairly easily. An example are INTPs and ESFJs.
Other examples of dynamic relationships are antagonism types (e.g. INTP and ENTJ), and secret types (e.g. INTP and ISFP). These are the three kinds of relationships that we have with the other members of our sodality, which is why they can be so problematic… but also so powerful as catalysts for change and growth.
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| North-west Sodality |
ENTJs and ISFPs have a relation of attraction. They aspire to the qualities of their antipodal opposite even though it scares them and they know they can never be really good at it. The same goes for ESFJs and INTPs. In the core complexes this would be the P1/P2 relationship.
ESFJs and ISFPs have a relationship of antagonism. Even though they are actually pretty good at the qualities of the other they don’t value them and have an aversion to using them. The same goes for INTPs and ENTJs. This is the P1/P3 relationship.
ENTJs and ESFJs have a relationship of secrecy. This is their blind spot, the thing in themselves that they’re not aware of. Normally it only comes out when the individual is pushed to their limit, especially if the inferior (animus) function has been attacked. In this case it manifests itself in the worst, most brutal way, threatening to burn down the world. But if you manage to integrate it, the other type is their deepest truth. The same goes for INTPs and ISFPs. This is the P1/P4 relationship.
The structure of a sodality
A sodality is made up of two pairs of antipodes (diametrical opposites) that mirror each other. In the example of the NW sodality:
- INTP and ESFJ are antipodes (opposites), as are ENTJ and ISFP. The two antipodal/attraction types have the same functions but in reverse order.
- INTP and ENTJ mirror each other, as do ESFJ and ISFP. That is, while they have the same root functions in the same order (e.g. thinking → intuition → sensation → feeling in the ENTJ and INTP), the attitudes of each function are polar opposites (e.g. Te vs. Ti).
A sodality can be thought of, at its deepest level, as one person with four faces. We have ourselves (P1), the antipode or opposite of ourselves (P2), our antagonistic mirror image (P3), and the antipode of that mirror image (P4).
The ego and the antipode (P2) are reversed versions of each other, and the ego and the antagonist (P3) are mirror images of each other. Taken together, this makes one person with an internal opposite (P2), both of whom have a mirror image (P3 and P4). These four sides of the person make up one sodality.
Sodalities and Houses
This section goes further into the structure of the sodalities and how they relate to the houses. It’s not really necessary to understand the sodalities, and it’s even more abstract than the rest of this post and this is a pretty abstract post to begin with. If you’re not interested exploring the deep structure of the MBTI I suggest you skip down to the next section where I give an example of what a sodality looks like in action.
The houses, as we know, are groups of the types that share the same functions. The houses are Ash, Oak, Yew, and Rowan.
If you look at the conscious functions of the four houses you can see that two pairs – Ash & Oak, and Yew & Rowan – complete each other, the two pairs forming what is basically a full, complete set of functions. For example, the conscious functions of House Yew are Se/Ni and Fe/Ti. If you add Rowan's Si/Ne and Fi/Te you get a full set of functions: Se, Si, Ni, Ne, Fe, Fi, Ti, and Te. Ash & Oak belong to the West side and Yew & Rowan are the East.
These sides can be further divided into the four sodalities, groups which share the same core complexes; the North-west, South-west, North-east, and South-east sodalities. This naming convention - North, South, East, & West - doesn't actually mean anything, it's just the best I could come up with as I can't find a good, meaningful symbol system for the four sodalities. So, cardinal directions it is, unless and until someone can come up with something better!
The North-west Sodality is made up of ESFJ, INTP, ISFP, and ENTJ.
The South-west Sodality is made up of ISFJ, ENTP, ESFP, and INTJ.
The North-east Sodality is made up of ESTP, INFJ, ISTJ, and ENFP.
The South-east Sodality is made up of ISTP, ENFJ, ESTJ, and INFP.
I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the connections between the members of each of the sodalities are but it's really hard, not surprisingly. When you start uniting so many different things that have been split apart it's really hard to find what specifically unites these disparate parts. But this is a tentative theory:
Two of the sodalities – the NW and SE sodalities – appear to be initiating, while other two – the SW and NE sodalities – appear to be receiving. That is, the NW and SE sodalities want something while the SW and NE sodalities decide whether or not that thing is going to exist. When I had this revelation this is what I wrote:
NW is Yang, SW is Yin. ENTJ, ESFJ, INTP, ISFP are initiating; they do what they want. SW is receiving; they respond to what others want. They support or reject it. NW has to win SW over in order to do anything. The same with the SW and NW. The Western side desires something true, for the world to work well (Ti).Yang is active and initiating; yin is receiving and supporting. Yang comes up with the idea, Yin decides whether or not that idea is going to become a reality. Yang tends to be more proactive, while Yin tends to be more reactive. What I mainly see in the Yang sodalities (NW & SE) is a strong sense of wanting. Let's look at the NW (ESFJ, ENTJ, ISFP, INTP); all four of these types are actually very goal oriented, even the normally easygoing INTP (an INTP who's focused on something is totally consumed by it.) All four are absolutely driven when they've become possessed by a goal. The Yin sodalities, on the other have, give a strong feeling of judgment. The types in the SW (ISFJ, INTJ, ESFP, and ENTP) generally seem to examine other people's goals and decide whether or not they're worthy of support, after which they work for these goals or not, or even actively resist them.
In the East, the SOUTH-east side is Yang, and the NE is Yin; SE wants something, NE responds to what they want. In the case of the East, however, the desire is moral, a desire to change the world for good. SW needs to convince NW that their desires are truly moral and good (Fi).
In the East the situation is similar, but where the West is interested in finding the truth – even the ISFP's search is for truth, the truth found in true beauty – the East seems to be searching for moral truth, that which is truly moral. What should we do as a society? Rather than searching for that which is true, the East searches for that which is correct, like Buddhism's Eightfold Path (right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samadhi.) The types in SE say “THIS IS CORRECT!” while those in the NE ask themselves if it is, indeed, correct. If they agree they support it, and take it upon themselves to live this path and promote it. Even the INFJ, which on the surface seems to be a source of morality, is actually the receiver; INFJs absorb the morality of those they surround themselves with. They need the morality of others in order to truly be moral, not simply moralistic.
This probably has something to do with the fact that the primary contradiction of the NW and SE sodalities (Yang) is between the two judging functions, while the primary contradiction of the SW and NE sodalities (Yin) is perceiving. The types of the Yang sodalities have thinking and feeling as their “spine.” This is the term John Beebe coined to refer to the main axis of a type, the line that runs from hero/ine to anima/us (the axis connecting the parent and child is called the “arms”). In the Yin sodalities, however, the spine goes from intuition to sensation. The main task of Yang is to unite heart and mind, to express the will of the Universe. The main task of Yin is to unite the spirit with the body, the soul of God with the world, to manifest the Universe's will. Yin is the fire of the engine, Yang is the spark that sets it off. I believe this leads the types of the NW and SE sodalities to want to act on the world, while the SW and NE sodalities decide whether or not they're going to accept what the world brings them.
This isn't to say that types in the Yin sodalities never initiate, or that Yang sodalities never receive, just that generally the NW and SE sodalities seem driven by their desires, while the SW and NE sodalities seem to generally judge, support and take on, or reject others' desires. Or that types in the East never think, or those in the West never feel. This is a high level, bird's eye view of the types' overall orientation to life. Also, this is a verrrrrrrrry preliminary theory. A lot more work is going to be needed to prove or disprove it.
Finally, if we overlay the houses back on the diagram it looks like this:
This is the deep structure of the MBTI, and the relations between the various types of the MBTI. There are further structural relationships that I won’t go into here (and more I’m sure that I haven’t figured out yet). The types aren’t just random collections of personality traits. They aren't even just the functions that make up their type. They have a deep connection with the other types of the MBTI, mirroring and opposing each other, clashing and combining, seemingly full of chaos but with a deep, underlying order.
Example: Shaun of the Dead
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| Shaun's and Yvonne's groups |
Shaun of the Dead is a horror comedy about a bumbling, aimless electronics salesman trying to keep his family and friends alive during a zombie outbreak. Shaun is your unheroic anti-hero, very much like Homer Simpson in his ability to mess up his life. The characters are:
One of the great things about works of fiction – movies, TV shows, books, what have you – is that the characters are, if the story has any “juice” to it at all, often representations of various sides of the writer’s personality, or at least various sides of a personality maybe not necessarily the writer's. Characters in fiction are, with few exceptions, far more simple and less internally contradictory than real, actual people. And that’s what makes the stories so satisfying; watching how these various “personalities” interact with each other, and hopefully come to a positive resolution, resonates with something in us. In the same way that dream figures are parts of the dreamer, the various characters are essentially parts of one total person.
In this movie Shaun has several conflicting relationships. There’s his relationship with his two roommates: Pete, who is the adult of the house, who has a real job and a car that he drives to his very responsible and adult job every day; and his good-for-nothing, video game playing, weed smoking best friend Ed. The two men are two sides of the protagonist’s personality: the serious, hard-working grown-up and the lackadaisical, fun loving shlubby Peter Pan.
As Shaun’s still kind of stuck in boyhood his relationship with his anima is also not quite worked out either. In one scene he forgets it’s his and Liz’s anniversary and ends up giving his long-suffering girlfriend the bouquet he’d actually bought for his mother (Liz sees the card of course and this is the final straw where she finally breaks up with him.)
This kind of doubling occurs when the unconscious is trying to differentiate – to separate out psychological contents – to see what they really are in order to unite them on a higher level. This is essentially the process of psychological growth. It is, in fact, the exact process going on within the sodalities of the MBTI. Growth for Shaun might look something like this:
As he leaves his immature, childish anima in the form of his mother for a mature anima (Liz) this allows him to grow into his mature, adult self, one that’s capable of taking care of things; in other words, to “become a man.”
We separate out the parts from the undifferentiated whole, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to unite them on a higher level, but without losing the differentiation we worked so hard for. It’s through this process of differentiation and reunification that progress is made, both personally in our own lives but also for society as a whole. When an individual succeeds in this they bring all of society with them, and the more people who succeed at it, the stronger, and further, the societal advance is.
The two main couples of the sodality are Shaun and Liz, and his old friend and former fellow DJ Yvonne and her boyfriend Declan. In the movie the two groups meet as they’re both trying to find the best place to survive the zombie apocalypse. Our group, of course, has probably made a terrible choice, being the Simpson’s-like inept boneheads that they are. The two groups run into each other going in opposite directions and, when they part, there’s a wonderful scene where you see that the two groups are literal mirrors of each other.
The two couples – Shaun & Liz, and Yvonne & Declan – form a sodality that looks like the image below: Shaun as the protagonist, Liz as his anima, Yvonne his shadow anima, and Declan, Yvonne’s boyfriend, as Shaun’s shadow ego. Let’s look at the North-west sodality in this example.
Shaun is the INTP, his antipodal/attraction is ESFJ, his antagonist is ENTJ, and his secret ego is ISFP.
He (P1) has a relation of attraction with Liz (P2). Yvonne (P3) is the antagonistic, shadow anima that shows him up. Declan (P4) is his quiet (and probably superior) other self.
So this is how the sodalities are structured, and how each complex relates to each other within the sodality. Watch the movie if you want to find out how everything works out – it’s really great so you should definitely check it out!
This was a fairly esoteric article. I really did try to make all of this make sense and I hope I achieved that goal. This post is more focused on the structure of the sodalities. In the later ones I’ll go more into how to work with the core complexes of the sodality.
Below is a chart of all the sodalities and their types. Clicking on the image will make it larger.
Links
The Cognitive Functions
The Function Roles
The Houses
The Core Complexes
How to type
Working with the MBTI
My MBTI story
Other resources
CS Joseph, “Who are the INFJs?”(YouTube)
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