Articles documenting how C.G. Jung identified various people as more than one type are becoming something of a theme for us here at CelebrityTypes (Jung on Freud, Jung on Adler, Jung on his own type.)
We don’t by any means blame Jung – we correct and update our own assessments quite incurably ourselves, and besides, Jung did not deny that type could change through life. But in the case of Nietzsche, we get an especially grave instance of “dual typing” – because here we get dual typing within the same book!
The case for Nietzsche as IN-J:
(Psychological Types §242): The fact that it is just the psychological functions of intuition on the one hand and sensation and instinct on the other that Nietzsche emphasizes must be characteristic of his own personal psychology. He must surely be reckoned an intuitive with leanings towards introversion. … His lack of rational moderation and conciseness argues for the intuitive type in general.
So Nietzsche is IN-J.
But then we get Jung’s case for Nietzsche as I-TP:
(Psychological Types §632): Just as we might take Darwin as an example of the normal extraverted thinking type, the normal introverted thinking type could be represented by Kant. The one speaks with facts, the other relies on the subjective factor. Darwin ranges over the wide field of objective reality. Kant restricts himself to a critique of knowledge. Cuvier and Nietzsche would form an even sharper contrast.
So Darwin and Cuvier are E-TJs and Kant and Nietzsche are I-TPs.
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Above, Jung said of Nietzsche that “his lack of rational moderation and conciseness argues for the intuitive type.” Well, said somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Jung’s promiscuous dual typing of Nietzsche within the same book conveys a “lack of rational moderation and conciseness” that argues for Jung himself being an intuitive type. :-)
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16 years later: The case for INTJ:
In 1937, 16 years after the publication of Psychological Types, Jung said the following of Nietzsche’s type:
“I have heard of mothers wanting to be paid for their love only too often. Nietzsche had not because he was a man with very developed intuition and intellect, but his feeling developed slowly.” (Jung: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, vol. I p. 1043)
As well as the following:
“[Nietzsche’s] main function is surely intuition, which would be up above, connected with the brain, with consciousness, and that is in opposition to that which is in opposition to the things below, namely the other three functions.” (Jung: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, vol. I p. 1082)
So strictly speaking, Jung has said that Nietzsche is an Intuitive dominant type with auxiliary thinking, but not whether he now considers Nietzsche an introvert or an extrovert. But not to despair, for in volume II of the same work, we get the following:
“In Nietzsche’s case … the unconscious came up with all its extraversion and … he locked the complex away from himself and dissolved in a tremendous extraversion within his isolation.” (Jung: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, vol. II p. 145)
So alas – if Nietzsche’s unconscious is extroverted, then by implication of the enantiodromia that fuels Jung’s thinking on typology, Nietzsche’s superior function must be introverted. In 1937, Jung would therefore consider Nietzsche an INTJ.
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Update: Bonus Quote: Nietzsche as an Intuitive Dominant Type:
“Nietzsche as an intuitive simply touches upon a thing and off he goes. He does not dwell upon the subject, though in the long run one can say that he really does dwell upon it by amplification. But he doesn’t deal with things in a logical way, going into the intellectual process of elucidation; he just catches such an intuition on the wing and leaves it, going round and round amplifying, so that in the end we get a complete picture, but by intuitive means, not by logical means.” – Jung: Seminar on Zarathustra (1934-39) vol. II p. 1083
Update II: Nietzsche as an Ni-Ti Type
Though Jung never commits entirely to any specific function model in Psychological Types, a closer reading of the passage on Nietzsche’s type in Chapter 3 would nevertheless seem to suggest that Jung thought Nietzsche an Ni-Ti-Fe-Se type:
“The fact that it is just the psychological functions of intuition on the one hand, and of sensation and instinct on the other, that Nietzsche brings into relief, must be characteristic of his own personal psychology. He must surely be reckoned as an intuitive type with an inclination towards the side of introversion. As evidence of the former we have his pre-eminently intuitive, artistic manner of production, of which this very work The Birth of Tragedy is highly characteristic, while his master work Thus Spake Zarathustra is even more so. His aphoristic writings are expressive of his introverted intellectual side. These, in spite of a strong admixture of feeling, exhibit a pronounced critical intellectualism in the manner of the French intellectuals of the eighteenth century.”
The implication being here that Jung often uses the term “intellect” as a synonym for Thinking in Psychological Types.
One might therefore conclude that Jung saw Nietzsche as a type that has no equivalent with regard to the modern-day arrangement of the functions. However, the matter is not nearly so clear-cut: As we saw above, Chapter 10 of Psychological Types still gives a example of Nietzsche as a Ti type in a context where he is speaking of “the normal types.” So no matter how one frames it, it seems that Jung held more than one opinion of Nietzsche’s type throughout his life.