The Animals
Introduction to OPS: Part 6
In our introductory series so far, we talked about the Human Needs and the Letters.
There are three binary coins for the Human Needs and two coins for the Letters. These 5 coins give us 32 types in total which we call the OPS-32.
Additionally, we have introduced the cognitive functions as shorthand for combining the Human Needs with the Letters. The functions do carry additional meaning but we’ll leave that discussion for a future article.
Every function has an introverted or an extroverted charge. However, overall introversion or extroversion is not determined by your first function. That’s an old MBTI myth that we want to dispel right here and now.
Overall introversion or extroversion is not even captured by your Savior functions alone. You can have two extroverted Saviors and still be an introvert as weird as that sounds.
The OPS-32, your Savior and Demon functions, capture your responsibilities and fears, what excites you and what triggers you.
They don't fully describe how you use all your functions to engage with the world.
Because you don't just do your Savior functions. Everybody does everything. The question is how and in what order of priority.
We want to find a definition that actually captures what goes on in reality.
What is a real introvert? Someone who leaves their biggest voids in the external world and causes themselves recurring life problems because of it.
Your Saviors alone don’t tell you if that’s the case. In order to answer this question, we need to introduce another part of the OP System. That part is called an Animal.
What is an Animal?
An Animal is a combination of a Decider Human Need and an Observer Human Need. That’s it.
Since we have two of each, we get the following four Animal combinations:
Di and Oi combine to Sleep [Di+Oi=Sleep]
Di and Oe combine to Consume
De and Oi make Blast, and
De and Oe make Play.
The Animals do pretty much what you would expect from the Human Needs involved and their names:
Sleep is responsible for coming to conclusions and setting rules for the self.
Consume is responsible for taking in new information for the self.
Blast is responsible for sharing processed information with others.
Play is responsible for expending energy with and gathering information from others.
Every Human Needs shows up in two Animals.
Essentially, the Animals give us more nuance to how the Human Needs can express themselves. Either in combination with one or the other Need of the opposite coin.
As with the Human Needs, everybody has and uses every Animal. But how and in what order? What are the Savior and Demon Animals and the relative balance between them?
Your type comes with an Animal stack that orders all four Animals in terms of priority. This stack then gives you a fuller picture of how you use all your functions.
Like your function stack, it captures your highest priority, what’s balanced and where you leave your biggest void.
Animal Coins
The four animals are paired in two coins. It’s the opposites that you get from the Human Needs.
Sleep and Play are one coin and Consume and Blast the other.
Sleep and Play is called the Energy coin because it’s related to energy expenditures. Sleep is related to planning and saving energy while Play is about expending energy.
We call Consume and Blast the Information coin because it's related to information exchange. Consume is about taking in new information and Blast stands for sharing processed information.
Everybody has one Energy Savior and one Energy Demon. Everybody has one Information Savior and one Information Demon.
How can we stack them?
Your two Savior functions always give you your first Animal. For example, if you’re Savior Fe and Savior Si, your first Animal is Blast. With that, your Savior functions decide if your first Animal is Energy or Info.
Your second Animal is always your Savior from the other coin. Hence, if you’re Savior Blast, your second Animal has to be Sleep or Play.
The third Animal in your stack could be either one of your demons and the fourth is whatever’s left over.
This gives us 16 possible Animal stacks: Four choices for your first Animal, two for the second, two for the third and one for the fourth.
Information and Energy Coins
As with the Human Needs, there is a third coin for the Animals that describes the relative balance between Info and Energy Animals. Unsurprisingly, it’s called the Info/Energy coin.
Every type is either Information or Energy dominant. Which one depends on the top three Animals in your stack.
If you have both Info animals in the top three, you're Info Dom. It means that you're balanced with info. You’re able to let it flow back and forth.
If you have both Energy animals in the top three, you're Energy Dom. You're balanced and adaptable with Energy. You're relatively easily able to save energy and expend it.
So if you know your Savior Animals, the Info/Energy coin implies the order of your last two Demon Animals.
Introversion & Extroversion
How do introversion and extroversion tie into all of that?
Every animal is not just energy or info, it’s also either introverted or extroverted.
Consume and Sleep are the introverted Animals. Blast and Play are extroverted.
Both your Savior Animals can be introverted, both can be extroverted, or they can be mixed.
Now we define someone as an introvert if both their introverted Animals are in the top three. This implies that they have an extroverted Animal last which means that they leave their biggest void in the external world.
Conversely, an extrovert is someone with both extroverted Animals in the top three of their Animals stack. In other words, they have an introverted animal last and leave their biggest void in the internal world.
This relates to a common theme in the OP System. We define types by the voids they leave and the reoccurring life problems that come with that.
With the new Animal coins and these definitions, we can slice the board of types in half to get a first overview of introverted and extroverted types.
There is so much more to say, not just about introversion and extroversion but also about Info and Energy Doms, and the Animals in general. But we will leave all that for future articles.
Conclusion
Now we know how OPS types capture responsibilities and fear, how you engage with the world and where you leave voids.
The next part of the system is a bit different. It’s about sexual energy.
Every function can either be feminine or masculine, flowy or pushy. This gives us four different variations of all the types we introduced so far.
These types can come across quite differently although they have the same core fears and leave the same voids.
But more on that in the next article!
