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Happy holiday, friends. My name is Sergey Shanri. I’m a psychologist, I lead therapeutic meditation sessions, and I’ve been researching Socionics for 12 years. Welcome to my new Socionics video—today we’re talking about retyping.

This is a sore point in our community. Typing is the foundation of Socionics practice, and we have a serious problem with it: people interpret both Socionics itself and other people’s types in very different ways. And that’s where retyping begins.

A typical situation looks like this: a person—often a client—first gets one type, then, say, in a chat they get a different type, and eventually they’re completely confused about which of the five labels they’ve been given is “the real one.” I’m sure many typists have seen clients like this. And, of course, it affects the clients most: sometimes they get so tangled up that it’s not even clear how to help—or whether it’s possible to help. Today I want to talk about how to make sense of retyping and what can genuinely support you in resolving it.

Before we begin, I’d like to invite you to my Telegram channel on advanced Socionics. I publish podcasts, new information, texts, articles, and other materials there. There’s also a link to a chat where we discuss these more advanced topics in a respectful environment—less noise, more constructive conversation. The links are below. Subscribe, and please leave a like as well: it helps promote Socionics in general, and high-quality Socionics in particular.

Now, let’s start with the reasons retyping happens.

## 1) Different theories: “different Socionics”
First, there are different theories—different versions of Socionics. People often say, “as many socionists as there are, that many Socionics there are.” The field is young. We still don’t fully understand how to develop it as a discipline.

Very few people think seriously about methodology: how a science should be built, how it should evolve, which kinds of knowledge can be treated as reliable, and which cannot. And Socionics doesn’t neatly fit the usual definition of a humanities discipline either. As a result, someone may come up with an idea, like it, and then hold onto it as *their* theory.

From there, both the theory and the practical work become chaotic. Chaos is a system that is especially sensitive to initial conditions: one person approaches the field one way, another person approaches it differently; one trained with one teacher, another with someone else. And then, like a butterfly effect, we end up with “different Socionics.”

## 2) Different practice: different typing methods and skill levels
The second reason is different practice. There are many methods for determining type: observation, interviews, physiognomy, going by one’s impressions, and so on.

All of us interpret a person’s manifestations through the lens of our own theory. We look at the questions, we listen to the words. Yes, we support this with knowledge and reasoning—but it’s still largely intuitive. On top of that, socionists (and regular users) have different levels of exposure and pattern recognition, and different levels of skill in applying those methods.

That creates interpretative chaos. Depending on what someone reads as one information aspect versus another, or as one Reinin dichotomy versus something else, we again get a butterfly effect: radically different versions of what the same words and the same behavior “mean.”

## 3) Lack of psychological skill: weak contact with the client
The third reason is that socionists are often not psychologists, and they may not have the professional skills required to build contact and rapport with a client.

Socionics work has an intuitive side—interpreting meanings—and a “classification” side—sorting observations into specific boxes. But when you work with a real person, you need to *feel* the person, and you need to build contact. That is an ethical, relational kind of work, and not every socionist can do it.

If a typist is not truly in contact with the client, they can misunderstand them. They may fill in gaps, project their own assumptions, or “read into” things. Something may seem convincing—but it won’t be accurate. The typing becomes imprecise, and the client ends up confused.

## 4) A toxic community environment
The fourth reason is a toxic social environment. In Socionics there are many people who violate psychological boundaries: they type others without being asked, they give advice without being asked. Many people come into Socionics—really, into psychology-adjacent spaces—in order to meet personal needs. Most of us, myself included, need psychological help at some point. I came to Socionics for that too, and later I received that help in a therapeutic environment.

But Socionics itself does not provide that kind of help, and it doesn’t have a therapeutic culture—a norm of healing yourself, developing yourself, and taking responsibility for your own happiness and self-understanding. What it often produces instead is arguing for the sake of arguing: feeding the ego, pushing opinions, trying to impose a viewpoint. And we get an interpretative cacophony.

Everyone says something; everyone has their own impression; everyone voices it all at once. And it’s hard to do anything about it. If a person is inexperienced—someone who hasn’t managed to understand either themselves or Socionics—enters that environment, it’s as if their inner tuning fork gets knocked out of alignment. They don’t even know what to orient to. They just hear a mass of facts and interpretations that contradict each other, and it’s unclear who, if anyone, is an authority.

## 5) Psychotherapeutic factors: difficulty trusting yourself
The fifth reason—and it’s very important—is when it’s hard for us to understand ourselves, for psychotherapeutic reasons.

Some people don’t trust themselves because they never developed that skill. Some were forbidden to listen to themselves. Some were told they were “one way,” when in fact they were different. Some were discouraged from believing themselves or from staying in contact with themselves. And inside, there may be a lot of emotional pain. To understand yourself, you have to meet that pain.

So sometimes a client goes through many typings and doesn’t believe any of the versions, can’t settle them internally, because of how their psyche is structured. That is not a Socionics issue as such—it’s a therapy issue. Their psyche is organized in a way that makes them doubt, distrust themselves, hand responsibility over to other people, and look to others to define who they are.

In that case, it’s very difficult to arrive at a stable typing: no matter what one person tells you, the next person—because of the reasons I described above—will tell you something different, and you’ll believe them next.

This is why it’s crucial to understand that responsibility for self-knowledge and self-identification lies with you. And it may take therapeutic work to help you take that responsibility. With that newly gained inner strength, you can become confident about your type—because you will understand yourself, just as you will understand Socionics.

And if you’re someone who sincerely wants to figure it out—someone who feels lost, but has an inner need to get rid of illusions and other people’s imposed beliefs, to sense yourself and your information metabolism clearly, and to understand how it works both in theory and in real life—then I want to share some ideas on how to do that.

I’m still thinking through what the right format would be for a service or a course like this, but here is how I see the key actions that can help. You need to work in several directions.

## Direction 1: dismantle myths in the theory
Because different socionists interpret theory differently, we can get confused about “who is who.” You need a solid understanding of what the functions in **Model A** are, what they are responsible for, and how they manifest.

And you need to understand that Socionics is not your psychological traits, not the words you use, and not your behavior. It is **information metabolism**.

First and foremost, it is your attention—and more broadly, which functions you use to respond to which information aspects. Understanding functions matters because information aspects exist, we react to them, and we need to be able to identify *how* we are reacting—through which function.

You also need to understand the information aspects themselves: their semantics—what meanings and topics belong to which aspects.

And you shouldn’t tie yourself rigidly to specific words. Words can belong to different aspects depending on context. In a particular case, a person may even use a word in a way that points to a completely unrelated aspect—simply because that’s how it seemed to them.

There are also broader myths, like: “this type can’t do that,” “this type never does that,” “this type must be like this,” or “Reinin dichotomies are just a recent invention and they don’t work.” You need to work with high-quality Socionics: these tools do work—if you understand them correctly.

If you send the next chunk, I’ll continue from here and keep the same lecture-style register and consistent terminology.

## Direction 2: dismantle myths about typing

The second direction is to dismantle myths about typing itself. In typing, you should never be categorical. The moment you adopt a categorical belief, you create an immediate opportunity for error.

In reality, people are capable of many different things. It’s important to look from multiple angles and to keep in mind: **type is the foundation of the psyche, but personality is much broader.** So—no rigid “never” and “always.” You need to learn to look deeper.

Typical myths include statements like: “a sensing type can’t do theoretical or abstract work,” or “only introverts are capable of reflection.” In practice, anyone can develop these capacities.

If we talk about **Reinin dichotomies**, we all show both poles of any Reinin trait at different times. However, “your” pole—the one that belongs to your type—tends to show up more often, more naturally, and with more ease. And we usually choose goals and tasks where our pole is the better fit.

Another common myth is that you can’t trust self-reflection—what some people call “self-report questions.” In my view, you can, and you should. The person who can understand you best is you—assuming nothing is blocking that understanding. Psychologists are particularly helpful here: in my typing work I use reflection-based questions, and if I see that a person doesn’t understand themselves well yet, I help them develop that understanding. That is precisely part of a psychologist’s job, and it’s a skill I bring to the process.

One clarification here: when I say self-reflection and self-report questions are important, I don’t mean you should naively treat any answer as automatically true. Self-report becomes reliable only to the extent that a person is actually in contact with themselves.

In practice, psychological defenses can distort self-perception: a person may sincerely describe themselves in a way that protects them from pain, shame, or anxiety—so the answer sounds honest, but it isn’t accurate. As a psychologist, part of my job is to notice these distortions and help the client differentiate an automatic self-protective narrative from a grounded observation.

And there’s another common scenario: a typist may draw a correct conclusion, but if the client is not ready to recognize those traits in themselves, they simply won’t believe the result. That’s why the task is not only to “name the type,” but to work through the defenses in a careful way so that the insight genuinely clicks for the client—and the typing becomes internally verifiable, not just imposed from the outside.

## Direction 3: learn reflection as a skill

The third direction is learning reflection. If you want to resolve retyping and clarify your type, you must learn reflection—awareness, the ability to observe yourself.

What do you pay attention to? How do you react to different kinds of information? What do you like and dislike? What interests you—and what doesn’t? What do you think about more, and what do you think about less? What creates tension for you, and what feels pleasant? What gets pushed into the background as “boring”? And what do you simply do in practice—without words?

You need to learn to track how the **functions of Model A** work in you. That requires reflection. It’s psychological work—and it’s one of the ways Socionics is genuinely useful. This skill will serve you many times over in everyday life.

Responsibility for your self-identification lies with you. That’s why your own reflection is the primary tool here. Of course, it needs to be supported by solid theory.

In practice, you’re learning to monitor your attention: what theme you direct it toward, and which part of your psyche responds to that theme. That is how Model A operates. This is the core of type. And once you learn to notice it, you can become confident and grounded in your identification.

Specific exercises can also help—tasks that push you to do what your type is more naturally inclined toward, and also tasks that require what your type is less inclined toward. This lets you see how easily and how interestingly different actions come to you, and how you interact with different kinds of information.

## Direction 4: psychotherapy (in complex cases)

The fourth direction is psychotherapy. In difficult cases, it’s important to understand why we don’t resemble “textbook representatives” of types. Why is it hard to trust yourself? Why is it hard to trust your conclusions and interpretations? Why is reflection difficult? The reasons can be as complex as you can imagine.

Therapy is not a quick process. Sometimes it’s even more useful than typing—and may be a necessary step toward it.

Because of upbringing, or trauma, certain functions can become strongly suppressed—or, on the contrary, overdeveloped. I’ve met extraverts who find it very hard to express themselves and live comfortably, almost as if they were introverts: few friends, little external social life, and a deep inner world. I’ve also met irrational types who were drilled with discipline so intensely that they genuinely prefer—and find it comfortable—to act according to a plan.

Most importantly, therapy can help by shedding light on *why* you got confused. If you’re confused, if there are many competing versions, if you feel unpleasant emotions about it—that is not accidental. Your unconscious brought you here for a reason; it “needed” something from this situation. There is meaning in it for your personal growth, and therapy helps you uncover that meaning.

These are the reasons I see behind repeated retyping, and the directions that can help resolve it. I’m glad to share this with you, and I’m also glad to help those who truly need help—and are ready to receive it.

Some people simply like to complain that Socionics is nonsense because there are different typings. Others genuinely want to understand themselves, but happened to meet different specialists and got lost in the process. If you truly want to figure yourself out, I invite you to write to me.

At the moment, I can offer individual consultations. Maybe one session will be enough—we’ll clarify the specifics, and everything will become clear. Maybe not. Even if you’re not ready for a consultation, I still ask you to message me. I’m considering other formats as well—possibly a course—and I’m currently running a survey for people who have been typed multiple times and ended up confused. In any case, reach out: if you answer about ten questions about how your typings went and how they affected you, it will help me understand people who face this situation in Socionics and how to support you.

So, write to me and subscribe to the channels. I’ll be very glad if you take the survey, and I will definitely give you feedback. If you’re interested in advanced Socionics, leave a like, subscribe, join the chats, and share this with anyone who might find advanced Socionics helpful.

And it would be great if you wrote in the comments the most impactful insight you had while watching this video.

That’s all for today. Much love to everyone.