Redeeming the 8th Function: Being Towards Death

What I seek to offer is a specific path towards improving our relationship with our 8th function that tries to transform the nihilism and resignation that can arise in this relationship. Such attitudes of nihilism and resignation can be quite subtle and unconscious rather than overtly intended, especially if you are reflecting attitudes that are quite common in other people. Depth psychology suggests that most people have an unconscious affinity for these negative emotions of nihilism and resignation, including myself. I relate to the pain of the 8th function a lot since it has been cruelly imposed on me, and thus I have a lot of care and empathy towards other people like myself who are struggling with it. I believe the struggle with the 8th function has the potential to be alchemically transformed into psychological gold, and I am unusually sensitive to approaches which don't take it in that direction since I believe I have an accentuation on that aspect of my own 8th function (accentuations lead to psychological obsession). For me it is not some distant intellectual concern, but an everyday reality, so while this path that I am offering heavily draws on the intellect, it is also heavily psychological in nature. I believe this path can allow us to learn from the example of people like Julius Caesar and Albert Einstein. I think this is better and less psychologically passive than coming to the conclusion that Caesar and Einstein have superior genes that allow them to engage with these functions, since I think assumptions to such superior genes is a premature reductionism which also facilitates a certain incorrect and passive psychological attitude to the relationship. That attitude will allow and produce pointless suffering, and it will not allow you to live up to your potential. Our genes only control a limited amount of what we express, and reality is better thought of as an autogenic self-regulating system. The metaphysician Chris Langan calls this SCSPL. Another term for this is autopoiesis, which gives us a much more life affirming relationship to the co-creation of reality than the assumption that most us arises due to the mechanism of our genes, and plenty of scientific evidence doesn't support an over-reliance on the determinism of genes in deciding our behavior (although it may decide whether your body is suitable to be a professional athlete, but that is something PHYSICAL, and thus less surprising).

Our 8th function is our greatest existential dilemma of all, since it directly opposes and cancels out our 1st function. Because of this, the 8th function is likely our greatest obstacle (in terms of Socionics) for developing enduring inner peace and enlightenment. At close distance with someone else who embodies this function (such as the Complete Opposite or Auditor), it can be overwhelming: take the example of Ron Wayne, a Critic who co-founded Apple. He sacrificed possibly billions of dollars and lots of fame so that he was not overwhelmed by the extroverted intuitives he worked with: Steve Jobs (Mentor, Auditor) and Steve Wozniak (Seeker, Complete Opposite). It is often the correct decision to separate yourself from the 8th function like this and give it freedom if you are not prepared to engage with it. This phase of separation is also a key part of Jungian psychotherapy which is based on esoteric alchemical principles and it is the beginning of a phase called "Albedo". I did not mean to say that Victor Gulenko was portraying the relationship as "bad", but that I saw some nihilism and resignation in the proposed relationship with the 8th function. This nihilistic portrayal actually makes sense to me; it is correct to include since nihilism and resignation are problems that the Critic struggles with as a type, and Critic is the integral type for this Redemption relationship. However, there was not as much material offered on how to break out of these problems. I have a lot of respect for Victor Gulenko's take on this relationship, without which I would not have a starting point so I am quite indebted to it. He has a more involutionary psyche that is better able to come up with generally effective solutions that give people a good orientation to the whole scope of what he is teaching, and often this is quite original. However, I don't think this particular solution is sufficiently perfected in some important details and intermediate links that might be desired by an evolutionary psyche like mine that is immersed in the problems of the 1-8 function relation. To start, I will list where I believe more work can be done:

-It has been said multiple times that this 8th function is weak and "isn't who we are" and is best left to other people such as our mirror type. I think a more neutral and complete formulation is that we have more potential for problems on this function, which has also been mentioned but could be emphasized instead of saying that it is inherently not who we are. The real you is the eternal universe and your fantastically complex connections to it, not a single archetype like a type. "Weakness" is a relative concept. It's an inflexible and biased leftover from the failures of Model A, and as we can see, weakness isn't always an inherent truth of the 8th function: Caesar and Einstein are counterexamples. Another counterexample for the concept of functional weakness is Carl Jung, whose launcher function is probably Temporal Intuition but Temporal Intution was unusually strong in him even though it is "one-dimensional". Ignoring examples like that or just making them special cases isn't wise: that is one of the main reasons that Einstein's relativity theory replaced Newtonian physics, since Einsteinian mechanics better explained the orbit of Mercury and was able to better calculate eclipses. These could be discontents of a paradigm, or they can be embraced and taken on board as the next paradigm is already being created.

-It has been said that the stress related to the 8th function and the shadow block is negative compared to the positive stress of the Creative block in Model G. This may often be true, especially in "ordinary circumstances", but in my view, we must even question ordinary things. Heraclitus: "If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it...", and there are a lot of psychological reasons that that's true. I think both the Creative Block and the Shadow Block can be a positive or negative stress depending on a number of other factors, and if you don't incorporate this insight into your concrete experience of life then you will misunderstand a lot of dynamics in such a way as to experience harmful and unnecessary stress.

-The emphasis on resolving conflict in the redemption relationship is repeatedly: separation, non-interference, allowing the partner to go their own way. This is a very sensible solution in many circumstances, and Victor justifies this further by claiming an emphasis on domestic (physical and psychological) compatibility. Maybe a further implicit justication here is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which generally suggests to fulfill Physical and Psychological needs before higher level Social and Intellectual needs. So maybe most people will want to hear about physical and psychological compatibility first for good reasons, but for some situations the intellectual level has to enter into your considerations sooner because you might need advanced and creative ways to solve challenging problems. This attitude of "ordinary life" can get in the way of improving people's lives with depth psychological wisdom that could help alleviate their problems and anxieties, because it is easy to dismiss the abstraction of the intellectual realm as merely "wifty" when you don't see its benefit for or impact on your immediate circumstances or ambitions. However, I think a fully integrated approach to the relationship between functions 1-8 is valuable to present to those who are in difficult circumstances with it or those who seek to proactively confront their individual and collective shadow. Moreover, I fear that part of the neurosis related to the 8th function is exactly because an unphilosophical and unpsychological attitude is taken towards it, especially important in these times where there is more stress than normal. In my view, interpenetration between all four levels of the communicative space ultimately protects, heals, enriches and evolves each of the realms through the tension that causes them to grow in their outlook and effectiveness (similar to how order and audit relationships drive quadra progression through tension of opposites). One-sidedness in focusing on one of the levels can make sense for a specialty focus, but it ultimately needs to be integrated with the other levels to prevent a catastrophic backfiring of opposites that Heraclitus and Jung also warned about (and magicians since the dawn of time).

One major reason that someone might get into a difficult situation in the function 1-8 relationship is because the comfort zone "habitats" of our 1st function are easily violated. We may be in an existential situation in which the 8th function is simply the best function to use. Even if we can't develop this function to a very high level in ourselves, we would at least need to learn how to transform the situation enough so that we can use our strong functions while using the 8th function in the minimal amount that we are capable of. What is much more dangerous is that extroverts (especially central extroverts) have the ability to use their functions in a penetrative and intrusive way that causes chaos and disruption in the habitat of the introvert. In this case, if we took the solution of separating ourselves from the 8th function to an extreme, then we would be completely stuck and overwhelmed since it intruded into the peaceful territory of our 1st function. That might be very stressful, but we need to know what to do in that scenario to retain our psychological health. You can't dismiss it, because you don't have control over such aggressive use of extroverted functions (e.g. a Mentor or Entrepreneur that causes risk and chaos everywhere for a Lyricist or Critic, for accidental or malevolent reasons).

Being immersed in such a difficult situation, you would need to find a way to come to terms with the difficulties of your 8th function. Or maybe you simply seek to be more prepared for such a negative outcome in advance, or you seek to be more mindful of your own weakness. Victor Gulenko for example wanted to have some qualities of the Entrepreneur, but realized that he couldn't act simply as an Entrepreneur without too much destruction and stress on his Analytical nature. However, Victor has been able to integrate Business Logic with some success in his practice: he's always telling me that he is not as focused on abstract theories and philosophy as I am, and is focused more on practical success and behavior in everyday life. And although Victor isn't Julius Caesar, I do think it's fair to say that he has a remarkable and special destiny as one of the greatest contributors to Socionics. I believe that all of us are capable of working towards a special destiny in our own way, but this takes a lot of effort. It was suggested that it might be the unusual genes or epigenetics of people like Albert Einstein and Julius Caesar that allowed them to so successfully engage with their 8th function, which is a quite a reductionistic assumption to make at the outset of such an investigation. Certainly Caesar and Einstein required sufficient quality in their genes for their extraordinary achievements, and a lot of luck. More importantly, they had a very powerful character and attitude that they cultivated every day of their lives in their thoughts, discipline, courage and actions until it culminated in their destiny of successfully tackling some of the most important problems of their time period.

We might not have the genes or luck of Caesar or Einstein (although we might), but I think it is wrong to put them on some inherent deterministic pedestal like having special genes if there isn't very good evidence to support it. Doing that leads us to a stance of resignation and archetypal projection of what we admire onto the other which makes us less likely to learn from and integrate the good qualities of such people in our own lives (including their successful dealings with the 8th function). The only way we can be comparatively individuated as people like Julius Caesar or Albert Einstein is to go through a similar hero's journey to our own 8th function, which will always be full of adventure and danger and lead us to the dialectical edges of our inner and outer world. The world isn’t an endless series of deterministic material causes such as genetics: causation is part of existence, but more fundamentally (at least for our purposes) it is a self-regulating conscious system for more reasons than I can touch on here. We can participate in this system with enough will and psychological and philosophical insight.

“Following your own star means isolation, not knowing where to go, having to find out a completely new way for yourself instead of just going on the trodden path everybody else runs along. That's why there's always been a tendency in humans to project the uniqueness and the greatness of their own inner self onto outer personalities and become the servants, the devoted servants, admirers, and imitators of outer personalities. It is much easier to admire a great personality and become a pupil or follower of a guru or a religious prophet, or an admirer of a big, official personality - a President of the United States - or live your life for some military general whom you admire. That is much easier than following your own star. (p. 71)” – Marie-Louise Von Franz (Jung’s greatest student)

Difficult circumstances, such as those created by central extroverts mentioned earlier (especially by the Dominant Mentor with their Nietzschean aspirations towards the "superior human" and their "sink or swim" mentality) may force people to start striving towards this integration and greatness, or we simply will not survive psychologically since so many former zones of comfort and safety are being destroyed. The Critic (integral type of the Redemption relationship) can't ignore the possibility of future crises which is why it can take the inevitable realization of such crises to get them to prepare for negative outcomes instead of going back to what is overly comfortable, familiar and safe.

“Hard time create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times.” – G. Michael Hopf

Taleb (another Critic who embraces Extraverted Intuition) introduces his concept of antifragility, which explains that certain things (including us) benefit from a degree of randomness, chaos, and disorder. While comfort, convenience, and predictability, breed the opposite–fragility... Buridan's Donkey Metaphor: A donkey equally famished and thirsty caught at an equal distance between food and water would unavoidably die of hunger and thirst. But he can be saved thanks to a random nudge one way or the other. When some systems are stuck in a dangerous impasse, randomness and only randomness can unlock them and set them free. You can see here that absence of randomness equals guaranteed death... If you want to accelerate someone's death, give him a personal doctor....access to data increases intervention, causing us to behave like the neurotic fellow. It is almost impossible for someone rational, with a clear, uninfected mind, someone who is not drowning in data, to mistake a vital signal, one that matters for his survival, for noise - unless he is overanxious, oversensitive, and neurotic, hence distracted and confused by other messages... Provided we have the right type of rigor, we need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, near-traumatic episodes, all these things that make life worth living, compared to the structured, fake, and ineffective life on an empty-suit CEO with a preset schedule and alarm clock. What we call diseases of civilization result from the attempt by humans to make life comfortable for ourselves against our own interest, since the comfortable is what fragilizes... If you take risks and face your fate with dignity, there is nothing you can do that makes you small; if you don't take risks, there is nothing you can do that makes you grand, nothing. And when you take risks, insults by half-men (small men, those who don't risk anything) are similar to barks by non-human animals: you can't feel insulted by the bark of a dog.

“Until you embrace your full potential, you will only be a pawn of fate, never its master.” -Valkorian from Star Wars

There are four relationships that have a Dialectical integral type: Duality, Direct Order, Reverse Order, and Redemption. Their dynamic quality leads to changes, their evolutionary quality leads to a lack of reversibility, and the negativism produces great tension of opposites. Jung on Paracelsus: "Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension of opposites." So these relationships each have the greatest irreversible shifts in energy at stake out of all relationships. All of them, like dialectical types, can be so critical as to incur self-destruction. Order relationships can create the largest eruptions of energy which are destructive if not channeled into productive work. Duality leads to deep bonds that when broken can leave a person helpless and spiraling negatively (e.g. Analyst Andrey Sakharov and his descent from physics to politics), but they provide the greatest energetic support. Redemption can extinguish one's energy, but it can also lead to a release of what is holding one back and a birth of thrilling, sensitive information from the 8th function as a result of the tension between the 1st and 8th functions which constantly threatens your ego with death.

“We are born with sensibility and come into a world of ready-formulated ideas. As we develop, we may either adapt our sensibility to receive these ideas– or we may painfully create ideas (disciplinary dogmas) which the freely expanding personality can hold in tension. In the latter case, the space between self and dogma is bridged– there is a bridge, not an abysm of despair– by doubt. My contention is, that a creative gift or poetic sensibility is only consistent with such a state of spiritual tension and acuity. True originality is due to a conflict between sensibility and belief– both exist in the personality, but in counteraction. The evidence is clear to read in all genuine mysticism and poetry.” – Herbert Read

There is no function more against our natural sensibility than the 8th function. Embracing this function is not comfortable, but the evidence I have gathered suggests to me that it is necessary to reaching our full potential. Nonetheless, as a precaution, insensitive and deliberate pushing of our redemption partner (or our own 8th function) to an extreme is unwise unless there is some understanding or relationship you have which would allow that. A Critic will not become a Seeker, but they can release a lot of energy that holds them back with pointless anxiety and obsessions and transform it into creative output. Probably this can be extended to all types.

The brush with depth above connects to a well-known psychological drive, the Thanatic Drive, discovered by Sigmund Freud and Sabrina Spielrein. All 8 of the functions in Model G are connected to some major psychological drive, in my opinion. Handled carelessly, the 8th function leads to self-defeat and self-destruction, which is very common. Like the death instinct, the 8th function is similarly repetitive and obsessive when psychological wisdom is absent from it. In some ways, both extroversion and introversion destroy themselves and this is most clearly seen in the relationship between the 1st and 8th functions, which is why it forces us to recognize the self-regulating nature of the psyche and forces us to become more than we are (via miniature death) to grow beyond our most important problems which seem insoluble at our current level of consciousness.

“The greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble. They must be so, for they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.”- C.G. Jung

“Despite appearances to the contrary, the establishment of order and the dissolution of what has been established are at bottom beyond human control. The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive. It is well that these things are difficult to understand and thus enjoy a wholesome concealment, for weak heads are only too easily addled by them and thrown into confusion.” – C.G. Jung

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” – Albert Einstein

Extroverts destabilize the whole system of polarities that they are part of due to their reckless actions; they have less to maintain since energy cannot be destroyed. Although they will never be as naturally restrained as introverts, they still must learn how to use their energy so as to be better contained in certain vessels so that they don’t destroy them and can work harmoniously. Introverts already restrain themselves (a kind of death: He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence - William Blake), not using their full allotment of energy as given to them by nature so that they can maintain and hold together some information structure. They have to learn that the vagaries of fate and energy can always disrupt what they are maintaining since energy is ultimately what powers and motivates life and it is more indestructible and whimsical than anything the introverts can maintain. They can learn to more creatively and flexibly let go and better hold the energies of the extroverts like a vessel. In the words of Nassim Taleb, instead of becoming robust, they can become more “anti-fragile”, able to maintain something without avoiding risk and chaos due to their growth. In order to grow this way, the extroverts and introverts must be able to die.

“In truth, those who practice philosophy correctly practice dying.” -Plato

τῷ ὄντι ἄρα, ἔφη, ὦ Σιμμία, οἱ ὀρθῶς φιλοσοφοῦντες ἀποθνῄσκειν μελετῶσι

“Philosophize is no other thing than for a man to prepare himself to death”- Cicero

The redemption relationship will always have this relationship with death due to its meta function of structural logic and its relation to the philosophical -Ni of the Critic. Structural logic relates to death because it relates to the skeleton with no energy, to the Grim Reaper and Hades, and to a static robotic machine that is entirely predictable, silent, and programmed. -Ni relates to cycles of time and entropy and how all things eventually come to die, keeping this firmly in mind (the Critic can also have a black sense of humor). However, as it relates to how extroverts and introverts need to die to come to terms with their 8th function, it is not total death. It is a quasi-death, like the snake biting its own tail: the Ouroborus. The negative aspect of the 8th function relates to the self-devouring aspect of the Ouroborus, which is already touched upon. We are swallowed up by death or some chthonic drive from our own psyche that overcomes our own instincts of life and individuation, descending into the painful underworld of terror and neuroticism. However, when we can recognize the psychological dynamics involved in our 8th function neurosis with the appropriate insight, the positive aspect of the Ouroborus is invoked: cyclic renewal of the personality, connection with cosmic wisdom traditions, and holding the tension of opposites (the tail in the mouth of the snake is a phallic and yonic symbol).

The snake is the perfect animal to represent this meeting with shadow and death in a way that can lead to growth, because the snake sheds its own skin. Just like the snake sheds its skin, we must shed the skin of our 1st function, our old insufficient goals and ways of acting and even our personality, in order to grow enough to birth our own shadow material and co-create the evolution of the cosmos on the opposite side of our redemption partner. We don't accept criticism well on our 1st function; it is this dynamic that helps us outgrow it when it isn't working anymore, uncovering more of our divine destiny than we could consciously understand.

If we want to understand what it means to be an authentic human being, then it is essential that we constantly project our lives onto the horizon of our death. This is what Heidegger famously calls "being-towards-death". If our being is finite, then an authentic human life can only be found by confronting finitude and trying to make a meaning out of the fact of our death. Heidegger subscribes to the ancient maxim that "to philosophise is to learn how to die". Mortality is that in relation to which we shape and fashion our selfhood... His claim is that the awaiting of death still contains too much of the actual, where death would be the actualisation of possibility. Such would be a gloomy philosophy of morbidity. On the contrary, for Heidegger, anticipation does not passively await death, but mobilises mortality as the condition for free action in the world. This results in a hugely important and seemingly paradoxical thought: freedom is not the absence of necessity, in the form of death. On the contrary, freedom consists in the affirmation of the necessity of one's mortality. It is only in being-towards-death that one can become the person who one truly is. Concealed in the idea of death as the possibility of impossibility is the acceptance on one's mortal limitation as the basis for an affirmation of one's life. So, there is nothing morbid about being-towards-death. Heidegger's thought is that being-towards-death pulls Dasein out of its immersion in inauthentic everyday life and allows it come into its own. It is only in relation to being-towards-death that I become passionately aware of my freedom.

For all this wisdom and depth that the relationship between the 1st and 8th function can bring, it can only happen if you take the appropriate philosophical viewpoint of the psyche as a self-regulating system in which we have the agency to recognize certain psychological dynamics and grow beyond them as something fundamentally more than them. If you haven’t come to these realizations, then the Critic or the redemption relationships only runs into endless dispiriting problems. It is like the divine self-creative spark of the relationship is no longer there, and all you have is the shattered husk which creates endless misinterpretations and distortions. The Jews called this the “Kellipot”. When we remember to redeem the divine spark in these relationships and we make our purposes sufficiently cosmic in nature, only then can we navigate through the problems of nihilism, cowardice and self-defeating victim mentality which plague the Critic and all redemption relationships. And I think that is a true beauty and purpose of this relationship which redeems all of these apparent problems: I think these problems of nihilism and victim mentality are really trying to teach us and get us to remember that the psyche is self-regulating and because of that, our individual, collective and cosmic growth are our responsibility. We can use it creatively deal with problems, even if we can’t completely solve them. Originally, Victor thought I was suggesting that he was saying that the Redemption relationship is "bad", which was a false impression possibly given by my title ("redeeming"). By redeeming, I really mean that we need to be redeeming the divine spark inherent in this relationship, not that anyone is saying it is inherently bad.

The positive side of the Critic, and possibly the redemption relationship and the usage of our own 8th function, is the development of an enduring, integrated and balanced inner peace and wisdom regardless of what happens, which helps the Critic overcome its nervousness. The Stoics were an ancient group of Greek philosophers (probably many Critics among them), admired by the Critic Nassim Taleb, who took the development of this inner peace very seriously. They purposely placed themselves in situations of misfortune and deprivation, because it helped them not be complacent and grow into an inner peace that was far less easily disturbed. They called this state “ataraxia” and “eudaimonia”, a truer happiness than could ever exist by only separating from or minimally dealing with our 8th function. When we integrate the death drive (8th function) into our own life drive, we won’t be as surprised by it and we can face all kinds of death with more peace and courage. Although it is hard, I would recommend it to people, because it is a great adventure. However, I am not a Seeker, so I still think they should be careful.

“One thing is needful. -- To "give style" to one’s character-- a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye.” – Friedrich Nietzsche