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The Letters
Introduction to OPS: Part 5
In the last two articles of our introductory series, we introduced the four Human Needs.
Self and Tribe make up the Decider coin, Organize and Gather the Observer coin. One Decider is always a Saviour, the other is a Demon. The same goes for the Observers.
Both coins are therefore unbalanced, but one is always more unbalanced than the other.
If you’re relatively more balanced on the Decider coin, you’re a Double Decider and Single Observer. And if you’re relatively more balanced on the Observer coin, you’re a Double Observer and Single Decider.
In this article, we talk about the four Letters and define the Cognitive Functions.
Essentially, the Letters give more nuance to the Human Needs. They describe how you make decisions and process observations.
As with the Human Needs, the four Letters come in the form of two binary coins. One coin is associated with the Deciders, the other with the Observers.
Thinking and Feeling
Let’s start with the Thinking/Feeling coin. We often shorten Thinking with the Letter T and Feeling with the Letter F.
In the OP System, Thinking is the responsibility for deciding what is true, what makes sense and how to get things to work. Feeling is the responsibility for deciding what is important, what is valuable and how to set priorities.
Of course, everybody thinks and everybody feels. Again, the question is: What is your Saviour, and what is your Demon?
You could be Saviour Thinking and Demon Feeling. This means that figuring out what’s true and how to get things to work is your obvious responsibility. It’s what comes naturally and what you tend to overdo.
Prioritising and deciding what’s important is what you neglect. You struggle with expressing emotions and tend to do work for work’s sake.
The other case is being Saviour Feeling and Demon Thinking. Setting priorities and deciding what’s important are your obvious responsibilities.
You do that naturally in favour of getting things to work and figuring out what is actually true. It’s not like you can’t do any work, of course, but you generally need to value something first.
Decider Functions
The Thinking/Feeling coin is associated with the Decider coin because you need to know what’s true and what’s important in order to make good decisions.
If we consider the Di/De coin and the Thinking/Feeling coin at the same time, we get four different combinations for having Saviours.
You could be…
Saviour Di and Saviour Thinking,
Saviour Di and Saviour Feeling,
Saviour De and Saviour Thinking, or
Saviour De and Saviour Feeling.
As a shorthand for these combinations, we use Carl Jung’s cognitive functions:
Having Saviour Di and Saviour Thinking is the same as having Saviour Ti,
Saviour Di and Saviour Feeling is the same as Saviour Fi,
Saviour De and Saviour Thinking is the same as Saviour Te, and
Saviour De and Saviour Feeling combine the Saviour Fe.
The cognitive functions come in pairs. If you have Saviour Ti, you have Demon Fe which means having Demon De and Demon Feeling. It’s the other way around if you have Saviour Fe.
The same is true for Fi and Te. You either have both or neither. One is your Saviour and the other is your Demon.
We also call Ti-Fe and Fi-Te function axes.
Sensing and Intuition
The second Letter coin is Sensing/Intuition. We use S for Sensing and N for iNuition. The thing with the letter N is a bit awkward, but the “I” already belongs to Introverted, unfortunately.
Sensing and Intuition are associated with the Observer coin. They bring nuance to how we process observations.
Sensing is the responsibility for observing the physical world and facts, and for presenting proof.
Intuition is the responsibility for making abstract connections, seeing possibilities and drawing general conclusions.
One is always the Saviour and the other is the Demon.
If you are Saviour Sensory and Demon Intuition, you are generally looking for proof before you draw conclusions. You are more aware of the facts but hesitant to guess.
If you are Saviour Intuition and Demon Sensory, you tend to go directly for the abstract understanding or the bottom line. You don’t waste time before you guess and pay less attention to the minute details.
Observer Functions
The Sensory/Intuition coin is associated with the Observers because you need to know the facts and understand them in context in order to process information well.
As with the Deciders and the T/F coin, we get four cognitive Observer functions if we cross the Observer Human Needs with Sensory and Intuition.
Oi and Sensory make Si,
Oi and Intuition make Ni,
Oe and Sensory combine to Se, and
Oe and Intuition combine to Ne.
These cognitive functions come in pairs, too. You either have Si and Ne, or Ni and Se. One function is the Saviour and the other the Demon.
Si-Ne and Ni-Se are the other two function axes.
Cognitive Functions
We introduced the cognitive functions as a shorthand for talking about two coins at the same time. But they are more than just a shorthand, which is important for typing and understanding yourself.
If you’re on the Ti-Fe axis, you associate reasons with yourself. Reasons feel more personal, while Feelings are relatively impersonal. It’s what you see as the natural value exchange between people.
If you’re on the Fi-Te axis, it’s the other way around. You are relatively more attached to your feelings, while the Thinking is impersonal. The natural value exchange for you is helping other people.
This results in very different styles of interaction and communication that depend more on your axis than your Saviours and Demons.
The same kind of personal/impersonal dynamic also exists for the two observer axis. But I bet we’ll talk more in-depth about that in a future video.
Function Stacks
In the last part of the series, we introduced four different stacks of Human Needs that define four basic types: IxxP, ExxJ, IxxJ and ExxP
All stacks have all four Human Needs. One pair is at the poles, the other is in the middle. From the top to the bottom, they alternate between introverted and extroverted Needs.
We can combine each stack with the Letters in four different ways to get a total of 16 different function stacks. These function stacks correspond directly to the 16 Meyers-Briggs types.
Let’s take a closer look at the IxxPs to see how this plays out.
For the Decider and the Observer Needs, we each have two possibilities to assign axes, which gives us four possibilities in total.
Every IxxP is either an ISTP, INTP, ISFP, or INFP.
The ISTPs are on the Ti-Fe and Ni-Se axes, the INTPs are on the Ti-Fe and Si-Ne axes, the ISFPs are on the Fi-Te and Ni-Se axes, and the INFPs are on the Fi-Te and Si-Ne.
The Letters between the “I” and the “P” are the Letters of the top two functions in the stack, regardless of the middle Saviour.
Why do the stacks have these names? It’s another MBTI thing. OPS just stuck with it.
The top function is always the first Saviour.
For example, every ISFP is a Decider, Saviour Di and Saviour Feeling. The last function is always a Demon. Every ISFP is Demon De and Demon Thinking.
All of them have Se as their second function in the stack and Ni as the third. But the second Saviour can either be Se or Ni.
We call the types with the second function as their Saviour “Standard types” — and the ones with the third function as their Saviour “Jumpers” because they jump their second function.
So if we take all five coins we introduced so far into account, this gives us 32 different types. We call them the OPS-32.
We can describe them by their first and second Saviour function. And for each of the 16 standard types, there is a jumper type that has the same stack but the opposite second Saviour.
For example, Felix’s type is Ti/Se.
This means that Ti is his first Saviour function and Se is his second Saviour function. Ti-Fe is his Decider axis and Ni-Se is his Observer axis. Felix is a Standard type because his first Saviour is introverted, and his second Saviour is extroverted.
So, he’s a Standard ISTP.
Holly’s type is Te/Ne.
Both her Saviour functions are extroverted, which means that she’s a Jumper. Te is her first Saviour and Ne her second. She’s on Te-Fi and Si-Ne axis. All types with De first have Oi as their second Human Need. For Holly, it’s Si but it’s her middle Demon.
In total, this makes her an ESTJ jumper.
We’ll talk more about jumpers, function axes and all that in future articles.
Conclusion
The OPS-32 represent the core of the types. It captures your core fears and imbalances. However, it doesn’t capture how you expend your energy.
The Human Needs have either an introverted or extroverted charge, but they don’t determine if your type is overall more introverted or extroverted.
All IxxJs have an introverted function at the top, but some of them are super extroverted. Other types even have two extroverted Saviour functions but are still overall introverted, like Holly, for example.
All this comes down to another part of the OP System, which we’ll explain in our next article.