Prokofyeva, Tatyana¶
Tatyana Prokovyeva - a mathematician by background, Moscow socionics theorist and practitioner, general director of the Socionics Research Institute, leads consulting groups and twice a year holds conferences on the topic of socionics. Author of the concept of “geometry of relations,” a comparative analysis of socionics with the theory of Erickson, participated in research of Reinin traits.
Biography¶
Born on 12.02.1956.
In 1979 graduated from the Mechanics and Mathematics Department of Moscow State University.
Since 1997, led the School of Socionics in Moscow. Author of numerous books and publications on Socionics.
From roughly 1996 to 1998, worked with Elena Udalova, together with her co-authored the semantic typing techniques in socionics.
Since 1999, organized with the help of teachers and graduates of the Moscow School of Socionics a series of research conferences and seminars on socionics.
In 1999, to achieve a better understanding of human psychology, received a second degree in sociology and psychology by taking courses at GASIS.
In 2007 registered Socionics Research Institute which she heads in the position of general director.
About her participation in Socionics¶
Interview conducted on 29th of October, 2009.
- How were you first introduced to Socionics?
- It was by accident. I worked in the department of physiology, development and education of children. This was at the Central Institute of Advanced Medical, which is now called “Russian Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education”. This institute had a tradition that I really liked: once a year they held so-called “professor’s course” that were attended not by the field doctors but by the professors who taught them. And they, among other things, conducted 1-2 lectures on their current topics of interest and involvement. In particular, one lady from Barnaul read two lectures on socionics. That’s when I became interested in it. I’ve recorded her lectures and then started to notice types of my my co-workers and friends.
At first my department apprehended my new hobby with hostility (“Socionics doesn’t exist. Even the names of the type are ridiculous .. “), but then, little by little, people started coming to me one by one to diagnose their types, which I helped them with but without much confidence. There was no literature, few sources of information. At this point, I have developed interviewing as a diagnostic technique, about which I have written to Victor Gulenko - that it exists and is recognized as one of the most effective ones. Later the results of these first typings have underwent some correctons, but not many; for example, our head teacher in the end turned out to be of type Zhukov (SLE) and not Napoleon (SEE). Most other typings have matched. And so with other employees.
For a long time, socionics has remained my personal interest which I couldn’t share with anyone. Back then at lectures I was identified as Jack (LIE). Watching my husband, I have typed him as Dumas (SE) and realized that there is something wrong here. And he was a very well pronounced case of Dumas type - a rare case when there was virtually no doubt of his type. Then I made some more observations of myself and came to the conclusion that my type is Don Quixote (ILE). I already had a table of intertype relations at that point. At first, no one in the department believed that my husband is my dual, but then later all of it was confirmed.
I’ve very closely communicated with Elena Udalova at that time - we brought up our children together, organized holidays for children, did many interesting things. I told her of socionics and we began analyzing our various domestic conflicts and seek socionics methods of their resolution - and something began to take shape, which was very interesting .
Then we went to Lenin’s Library (this was in 1995), and began to search for any material that pertained to socionics. By this time, Gulenko’s book “The Management of Coordinated Team” was already out, and something by Yakushina and something else, I don’t remember. We looked for contacts and made some calls, but for the most part received feedback of the kind: “Girls, I’m a psychotherapist myself - I don’t understand anything in this socionics, and don’t recommend this to you.” But we were not discouraged. As a result of this search, we found Yuri Dorozhkin who at some point worked as administrative assistant with Aushra Augustinavichiute, besides being a very charming and interesting person. He came to visit us and told us all about what is being done in socionics , how is the community doing, who comprises this community, what research is being currently conducted. He spoke of conferences, said that they very much need articles and studies.
We showed him our ideas of socionics inspired solutions of conflict situation. He was very interested in this and said that we must write about this and send it to a socionics journal for publication. In short, he inspired us to write an article. We wrote about the algebra of intertype relations and named this article “How to realize the process of dualization”. My contribution to this topic was the idea that the interaction needs to be examined from the point of view of function-to-function: for example, if someone “offends” me on referring function, then I need to see whether I have any negative impact on the reference function of this person. The idea behind this, that “the world is arranged fairly”, in general, is not new, but it was very interesting to observe that this did not happen literally “if he doing something that I have done to him before” but in a more complicated way - via effect on the same function. Udalova accepted this idea and together we wrote an article on this.
And her contribution to this same article was that she paid attention to the ideas of Igor Nikolayevich Kalinauskas on problems in intertype relations, and we have begun developing this segment, testing the assumptions in practice. Both topics have contributed to the dualization, to the alignment and development of personality, to building relationships with partners - hence the title of the article .
This first article we sent to Kiev - the answer came quickly enough. It interested some socionics professionals and was accepted for publication. And by this time I had an idea about ??the geometry of intertype relations. At the same time other socionics books and publications began to appear in print, in particular, the book of Sedih, where type masks were examined in detail - this was very interesting and had a relation to our research. These books constantly mentioned Reinin’s cube as a representation of Model A. One day I started to draw these cubes and see how they fit together with other cubes - and it was then that I developed the idea of geometry of intertype relations.
While bringing the cubes together along the edges by matching functions, on the upper face of ILE turned out to be SEI, on the side - type LII, on the front - type ESI. Four types united into a particular shape. Along the edges there formed another two types - in the end there were 7 types in total, and this was strange. Finally, I realized that at the top there was another type - this was ILI. Thus the total was 8 types - half the Socion. And where were the rest? In the morning an idea came to me that the information space should not be three-dimensional, and I “turned these cubes inside out” i.e. found a way to present these cubes visually in 4-dimensional space. The remaining 8 types fit there. The first 8 types included all “democratic” ones, and in the second 8 types were all “aristocratic”, that is, they live as if in parallel worlds, which are connected in the four-dimensional space. In other words, the space of socionics which is study is at least four-dimensional, although it’s difficult to say for sure something about the dimensions of the information space.
This geometry of intertype relationships we started to recreate in metaphors together with Udalova. Dual relations (one cube on another cube) - this is support. Mirror relations - this is shoulder to shoulder, people facing in the same direction. Conflict - is a confrontation, a hit on the back or on the face. Superego, quasi-identity, and activation turned out to be similar to a carousel (merry-go-round) - this produces dizziness in a relationship. All these metaphors we have tried to include in our articles.
Then Dorozhkin came by again and asked us whether the volume of the cube signifies anything. I started to think about this and realized that it can be emulating the volume of information metabolism. From this came the idea that cubes of different sizes, even in a dual relations, can connect not in the most favorable way - this is why dual relations can be comfortable, and sometimes they can be unfavorable. Small cube cannot support a larger one. This prompted the formulation of the fact that “not every sixteenth is your dual”. Large cube tries to shrink for the small cude, small cube tries to stretch to reach the large one - hence, the tension in the relationship. It is also bad when relations get stuck in only one plane and exchange does not take place across all eight functions.
This article was also sent to Kiev. From there came an invitation to the conference that we went to attend. We were received very warmly there - likely our articles generated some interest. We were introduced with A. Augusta who was able to diagnose people’s problems from one look and did it very accurately. She offered to teach me her method, but I refused because I thought that anything that involved mysticism and esoteric teachings was not my mission and not my way. My way was scientific research.
In 1996 we already started teaching socionics - it was a master class where we talked on this subject. As part of this master class, we developed a program which is still used to teach socionics in Moscow. In parallel, we have started offering consulting services, both of people and working groups, thus we have developed a system of socionics consulting. And in 1998 I started going to the conferences alone.