Ten (Edited) Quotes About Cognitive Functions

1

“Extraverted thinking … involves thoughts that are strongly influenced by what is ‘out there’: Facts, views and ideas which come in from [the outside] … (that is, not emanating from within our own minds). This is the kind of thinking associated with … empirical investigation, as well as concretized, planned thinking. … [It forms] judgments from … assessments of objective data.” – Phil Goss: Jung: A Complete Introduction

2

“[The introverted thinking type] is ‘building up his world of ideas’ … the ideas that are encountered [in his consciousness] … may be out of common circulation, but … can be far more profound … than the accepted dictates of conventional … thinking. These ‘new’ thoughts are, however, very difficult to articulate … [he] frequently goes on refining [his] conceptions when the patience of others has been exhausted.” – Renos K. Papadopoulos: Handbook of Jungian Psychology

3

“It is characteristic of extraverted feeling that it seeks to create or maintain harmonious conditions in the surrounding environment. … The extraverted feeling type will praise something … because it is proper to do according to the social situation. This is not pretense … but a genuine adjustment to [external] criteria. … – Daryl Sharp: Personality Types

4

“Extraverted thinking is interested in [data] that ‘holds true for everyone’ and proceeds to organize the external world [according to publicly] agreed definitions, whereas introverted thinking reflects on whether a particular construction [of the data] accords with the conviction of inner truth, regardless of what the received opinion might be.” – Kelly Bulkeley and Clodagh Weldon: Teaching Jung

5

“Extraverted feeling [uses] accepted or traditional social values. … It involves a conforming, adjusting response … that strives for harmonious relations with the world. … Introverted feeling strives for an inner emotional intensity. … The focus of such feeling is upon inner processes. … It is expressed in … intense, apparently raw emotion.” – Michael Daniels: Self-Discovery the Jungian Way

6

“Introverted sensation concerns itself primarily with finding order [and] organizing experience … whereas extraverted sensation involves compelling, often shared, experiences of the textures, smells, sights, sounds, and tastes of the world – a direct relationship with reality.” – John Beebe: Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type

7

“[Extroverted Intuitive types] show [a] lively originality. … They can argue with great intelligence … [and] their … [intellectual] energy will lead to discussion and research. … [They] will avoid being too closely bound by fixed formulas and laws … [desiring] freedom of intuition. … [Introverted Intuitive types] … tend to find symbolic meanings in everything. … Their beautiful, somewhat vague theories and visions seem to lift them above ordinary human beings” – J.H. van der Hoop: Character And The Unconscious

8

“Immanuel Kant, being a Ti type and having a preference for Si over Se, was very far from the ESP types in terms of his natural inclinations. Kant wanted to inquire into the conditions and rules that govern our cognitive faculties on the most fundamental level and to commit to writing a system of thought that appraised the limits of the box within which all human cognition unfolds. Indeed, from the Se perspective one might easily say that Kant’s works seem like some alien landscape where everything is ripped out of the context of life and posited to exist outside of everything that is real in an effort to control it intellectually. Faced with the Kantian endeavor, then, the Se type can but laugh: ‘If you insist on living your life according to the belief that your cognition is constrained by some invisible ruleset, which scantly makes any practical difference in your life, whether it existed or not, then you are the one who is living inside a box,’ the Se-type might say.” – Ryan Smith: Unpublished Manuscript

9

“Jung in one place gives as marks of function differentiation: Strength, stability, consistency, reliability and adapted-ness. And of the undifferentiated inferior function, it is lacking in self-sufficiency, depending on people and circumstances, and unreliable, inclining one towards moodiness. ‘The inferior function always puts us at a disadvantage because we cannot direct it,’ he says in one place.” – J. Jarrett: Jung’s Theory of Functions

10

“Types with feeling dominant are often prone to see things as they ‘should’ be; types with thinking dominant to see things as they logically ‘must’ be; types with intuition dominant to see things as they can be made to be; but the extraverted sensing types, as far as the eye can reach, see things as they are.” – Isabel Briggs Myers: Gifts Differing