Aushra Augustinavichiute

This article is about Aušra Augustinavičiūtė, 
Founder of socionics, the pseudoscientific theory of information processing and personality types.

Aušra Augustinavičiūtė was a Lithuanian psychologist and sociologist, and dean of the Vilnius Pedagogical University's department of family science, author of numerous scientific theories and discoveries, and the founder of Socionics. She was born near Kaunas in the family of a book publisher. In 1956 she graduated from the economics department of the Vilnius University as a financial specialist. After graduation she worked in the Ministry of Finances of the Lithuanian SSR (“Soviet Socialist Republic”) and taught political economics in institutes in Vilnius. For a brief period in 1968 she was dean of the department of family research at Vilnius University. Augusta’s self-typing was ILE, which has been disputed by few Socionists who knew her.

Career

According to the International Institute of Socionics, the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences recognized Socionics as a discovery and awarded Doctor Augustinavičiūtė a diploma and a medal named after Pyotr Kapitsa in 1995. Augustinavičiūtė was born not far from the city of Kaunas, in Lithuania. In 1956 she graduated from the economic faculty of Vilnius University as a financier.

She worked at the Ministry of Finance of Lithuania and later as a teacher of political economics and sociology in different educational institutions in Vilnius.

Her scientific works, with the exception of few, were not published during the period of Soviet power, but became more and more popular during the 1990s. The current structure of her theory was standardized by Doctor. Alexander Bukalov, Doctor. Victor Gulenko, and Doctor. Gregory Reinin after the founding of the International Institute of Socionics in Kiev, Ukraine.

Research

In the 1960s, A. Augusta was one of the first people in the USSR to study sociology when it was still not recognized by Soviet academia and was persecuted as a “false science”. Aside from sociology Augusta was interested in the problems of family relationships and sexology.

In the early 1970s, she discovered Jung’s Typology, Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, and Kempinsky’s theory of information metabolism, on the basis of which she and her associates developed the theory of socionics. Later, in the mid-80s, Augusta learned of Myers-Briggs Typology, on the basis of which she tried to improve socionics.

In 1978, A. Augusta wrote the article “The Theory of Relativity of Erotic Feelings” and published through samizdat the first version of the article The Dual Nature of Man. These were the first works on socionics.

In 1980, she published an article analyzing socionic types through Model A in the Lithuanian magazine Mokslas ir Technika, which drew harsh criticism from psychologists but great interest from readers, and published a new work, The Theory of Intertype Relations. In the 1980s she published a series of works on socionics, many of which were deposited in the library of the Lithuanian Academy of Science. In the 1990s she withdrew from active participation in the socionics community.

Books by A. Augustinavichiute

References:
[1] https://wikisocion.github.io/content/augusta.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aušra_Augustinavičiūtė