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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.
Socionics publications, descriptions, and profiles
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Socionics Type Profiles by T. Prokofieva and M. Kuzmina
See also
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Socionics Research Institute
Page on
Zanoza.ru
Prokofieva video
interview