Basics · part 3 of 5 · ◂ The information elements · overview · The four quadras ▸
Model A — the classical architecture — hands every type the same eight seats, called functions, and deals the eight elements into them, one each. The seat an element lands in sets two dials at once: strength (how capably you process that kind of information) and value (how much you care about it). Strong-and-valued feels like identity; strong-but-unvalued feels like a chore you happen to be good at; weak-but-valued feels like a craving; weak-and-unvalued is simply a sore spot.
The seats pair up into four blocks, and the blocks are the fastest way to feel the model: the Ego (seats 1–2) is what you confidently are; the Super-ego (3–4) is what you can perform but quietly defend; the Super-id (5–6) is what you hope other people bring; the Id (7–8) is what you can do and don't bother with.
| function | how it behaves |
|---|---|
| base (1) | Runs constantly and free of charge — it is what you do when nobody asked anything of you. From the inside it rarely feels like a skill at all, which is why people routinely undervalue their own. |
| creative (2) | The instrument you pick up deliberately, mostly in service of others: it is how you help. Strong and flexible, but switched off when nothing calls for it. |
| role (3) | A uniform you can wear convincingly for an afternoon — the quiet person working a reception line. Fine in short stretches; sustained demand here reads as pressure. |
| vulnerable (4) | The genuine weak point: narrow bandwidth, real pain when leaned on, and the origin of your most predictable frustrations. Socionics types people by this seat more surely than by their talents. |
| suggestive (5) | The standing request. Help aimed here arrives as relief — the decisive friend appearing exactly when you were stuck — and when it goes missing, it is felt as an unnamed lack. |
| mobilizing (6) | Small skill, large appetite. Progress here is disproportionately energizing, which makes this the one seat where encouragement and coaching visibly work. |
| ignoring (7) | Competence you decline to advertise: you can, and mostly choose not to. It comes out in private, or when you are annoyed into it. |
| demonstrative (8) | A strength that never asks for credit — running constantly in the background, joked about more than claimed. It is also the seat the two models read differently, which is the story of the next-but-one page. |
Every type page shows a full dealt-out stack — IEI, for instance — with each element in its seat.
The three-letter type codes are simply the elements in seats 1 and 2 — ILE is intuition (Ne) leading with logic (Ti) assisting. And when two people meet, their stacks collide: your base element lands in some seat of the other person's stack, and that geometry — strength meeting craving, strength meeting sore spot — is what the sixteen intertype relations formalize. The collision table on every relation page is exactly this, worked out row by row.
Read next: The four quadras
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