Can Functions Be Trained?

If you assume that some function can be trained simply by imitating someone, you are greatly mistaken.

There are two fundamental barriers here.
First, a person will only want to train in themselves the behavior they find useful, beneficial, or attractive. This may work for valued but weak functions—suggestive and activational. Yes, they often seem attractive, and training can genuinely improve the quality, i.e., the technique of how they work. But only the technique—not the energetic potential!

An LII, for example, can very well learn the craft of a stand-up comedian—but after each performance, they will still feel like a draft horse after 12 hours of hauling heavy loads. Because the technique can be adopted, but not the energy of the function.

Things are even worse with any non-valued function, especially the vulnerable one. The vulnerable function actually evokes aversion—why the hell would you imitate it or learn it?

But there is also a second barrier, even more important and insurmountable. You can “play” a certain function, understanding that the situation is a performance. But in real life, you can’t fully activate the vulnerable function by sheer willpower. It’s fundamentally impossible.

Let me explain using the example of an LII whom you tried to arm with brass knuckles 😃 by imitating an SLE:

Why is Se a vulnerable function for LII? Not because mom and dad didn’t teach it, but because their amygdala is actively working and constantly tells them that aggression against others can, first, bring pain and injury to themselves, and second, hurt another person. And here the same amygdala suggests that causing pain to another creates, based on past experiences, discomfort for yourself too (negative emotional experiences, accompanying fear, anxiety). And immediately, strong inhibition arises along the path of Se-driven actions. To overcome this inhibition, you would have to completely shut down the amygdalar nuclei of the brain. But that, sorry, is simply impossible. Otherwise, all temporal lobe epileptics, whose seizures are caused by electrical discharges in the amygdala, could prevent their seizures by willpower. Alas, no one has yet managed that.

Let’s go further and look at other brain structures. The LII has a strongly functioning insular cortex, which is responsible for the body’s homeostasis and the instinct of self-preservation (in contrast, the SLE has a very weak insular cortex—hence, a weakened self-preservation instinct). Blocking the work of your own insular lobe is, again, impossible. But as long as it’s working, it will hinder any attempts at risky or aggressive behavior.

And finally, there’s the frontal cortex with its constant weighing and evaluation of the social consequences of actions, along with the habit (especially in LII) of thinking ten times and mentally modeling all steps and consequences before “cutting” (acting). Again, SLEs and SEEs have no problem bypassing the frontal cortex’s anxious warnings about consequences—simply because theirs doesn’t work that well to begin with, only in fits and starts. But for LII, it works constantly, in a continuous background mode. And there’s no way you can teach an LII to turn it off—that is, to stop thinking about the social consequences of their actions.

And then there’s the cerebellum. Now we’re not even talking about desire, but about technique and capacity for successful aggression. Coordination, sense of balance, and to some extent, reaction speed. You can’t learn this through imitation or even long-term training. If you’re physically clumsy, you’ll stay that way, because that’s individual cerebellar physiology.

And finally, the hypothalamus. It forms primary desires and motivations in its nuclei—including those related to sex and territorial aggression. Some people have these motivating impulses from the hypothalamus, others don’t. And nothing can be changed here; the hypothalamus is one of the brain’s oldest and most conservative structures.

I hope I managed to explain why neither passive imitation nor even conscious training can lead to more frequent use of the vulnerable function. Not even in the form of outbursts.