In one of my previous posts I wrote about Si leading types being misunderstood in relation to their suggestive Ne. While these types do indeed tend to maintain homeostasis in their personal lives, it is erroneous to conclude that a lack of novelty is what they naturally desire. On the contrary, usually Si leads absolutely dread boredom and monotony. But, since their Ne is weak and unconscious, not only do they fail to discover new opportunities on their own - often enough they are not even aware that it is possible for these opportunities to exist in the first place, and that there might be something they are missing in this area. To such Si leads a lack of opportunities would appear as a sad, but inevitable fact of life, rather than something to be fixed. And this is why, should someone present them with something novel and original, they are likely to be highly appreciative of it.
This is just one example of the way I see the suggestive function in general. It is 1D, so it is one of the two elements the person lacks most in their life, and it is unconscious, so the person is not aware that they are missing it. Thus, when they receive information on their suggestive, it feels like fulfilment of a need they did not even know they had. It tends to feel like a revelation and inspire excitement or even awe, and after being made aware of the existence of this information the person starts craving and seeking more of it.
I believe that, like with the Si leads, the way many members of the socionics community imagine Te leads completely fails to account for their suggestive. As a result, popular stereotypes portray these types in a very shallow and misguided way, which might prevent real Te leads from typing themselves correctly. In this post I would like to partially remedy this and direct my readers' attention to a literary example, which I believe to be a wonderful illustration of the way suggestive Fi feels and manifests.
First we need to establish what kind of information Fi represents. While I am not sure I could provide a proper definition, I believe that Fi is connected to the person's ability to become cognizant of their own and others' personal narratives - inner lives, values and desires. Fi provides a link between the person's inner world and their actions, and this link is what allows us to use our observations of people in order to learn what they want and believe. In that sense Fi is similar to Fe, but while Fe connects our observations of people's behavior to short-lived, situational information about them (such as their emotional state), in the case of Fi the information is about that which persists between many situations and interactions (such as people's values).
One of the big issues for all types with 1D Fi is an inability to connect people's external behavior to their internal lives. To them others may appear as black boxes - something that can be observed, but whose inner properties are hidden and inaccessible. When it comes to self-awareness, this leads to 1D Fi types struggling with their own sense of identity. A person's identity is something that differs them from the rest, it is a concept that only makes sense when there is a comparison to be made. Therefore, one's identity can only be understood in contrast with the identities of others. But 1D Fi types struggle to understand others, which means that they have less to work with when they try to understand themselves (you could say that they have less material to refer to and compare themselves with).
There is a difference in how xLEs and LxEs deal with this challenge. For xLEs Fi is conscious, so on some level they are aware of their own shortcomings in this area (I wrote about this topic more extensively in one of my previous posts). If they do not want to admit this weakness, this leads to them consciously moving away from accepting what their own and others' actions reveal about the person's inner world, if anything at all. Even more worryingly, in an unhealthy state they may reject the very existence of huge parts of their own individuality, and convince themselves and others that their desires and motivations are less complex than they really are.
For LxEs Fi is not conscious, which is why they often seem to lack awareness of their internal landscape. Rather than wanting to disown their inner complexity, undualized LxEs may simply be blind to it. And, just as Si leads maintain homeostasis in absence of Ne, so do Te leads overprioritize achieving tangible, material results in absence of Fi. Neither of these are inherently moral choices on the part of the individual - rather, what these tendencies show is that when information is lacking, people default to doing things they know and understand best, which happen to be covered by their lead. These tendencies are often portrayed as core traits for Si and Te leads, but in actuality it is a response to a non-ideal, imbalanced situation in which these types do not get all information that they need.
But what happens when Te leads do receive Fi? Like I stated earlier in this post, I believe Fi information is connected to people's personal narratives that get revealed through their actions. What someone's actions say about them, what kind of person they show them to be. This information provides Te leads with understanding of the kind of narrative they themselves are living, which in turn allows them to decide whether this narrative is what they truly desire. Rather then achieving for its own sake, now the Te lead is able to act in a way that is meaningful to them. And I believe that, unless severely unhealthy, they tend to perceive this chance to achieve personal integrity as a priceless gift.
Nowhere does this get demonstrated as clearly as in Jack London's novel Martin Eden. Aushra Augusta, the creator of socionics, used London's name as a nickname for the LIE type, and thinking about this novel I am starting to understand why. Like London himself, Martin Eden is an LIE, and at the start of the book he is a poor and uneducated sailor. Through sheer chance he ends up visiting an upper class family and is completely blown away by what he encounters. Notably, what he finds so impressive is not their wealth, possessions or status - rather it is their very way of being, the way they carry themselves and talk, what they talk about, the gentleness they show each other. To Martin meeting this family serves as a catalyst - he realizes that human beings, including himself, have spiritual depth that he previously was not aware of. Through contrast between himself and this family Martin becomes aware that he may not be fully satisfied with the kind of narrative that he himself is living. However, on his own he still does not have enough information to resolve this, so he turns to books.
Books provide Martin with a framework to analyze others and himself, and for the first time in his life he is able to explore the depths of his own soul and his own spiritual longing. He discovers the kind of narrative that he finds admirable, beautiful and inspiring, and vows to embody it. In pursuit of this goal Martin becomes incredibly productive, optimizes his day so as to not waste any time, and spends every free minute on self-education or writing. Yet none of this effort is explicitly motivated by a desire for wealth - one the contrary, on several occaions Martin explicitly refuses to look for a long-term job that does not fit his quixotic dream, regardless of its financial prospects. Instead he strives to become what he considers his ideal of a person - someone educated, well read, with refined thoughts and feelings, a philosopher and a poet. While understanding the importance of money and material resources, he never prioritizes them and instead treats them as a means to an end. His reverence of beauty and love is what truly drives Martin, and his own transformation is perceived by him as the luckiest thing to have ever happened to him, even though at first it hardly brings him any worldly success.
I do not want to spoil the way this book ends because I hope that after this post at least one person would become interested to read it for themselves. But to describe what happens in socionics terms - during his encounter with the rich family Martin becomes aware of the existence of Fi information, and then starts receiving it directly from books. This provides him with much needed context for his own experiences and his place in the world, and awakens his desire for more, thus enabling him to make the most out of his strong functions. Yet the entire time Te information (which he has in abundance) is treated by him as something much less important than Fi information (which he, as an LIE, has serious difficulty producing). This is exactly what I saw happen in real life, and due to the extreme accuracy and depth of this portrayal (no doubt based on London's own experiences and struggles) I believe Martin serves as a great example of an archetypal LIE.
