A classic joke from 1929 about the difference between French, German and English philosophy runs as follows:
A Frenchman, an Englishman, and a German each undertook a study of the camel.
The Frenchman went to the zoo, spent half an hour there, questioned the staff, threw bread to the camel, poked it with the front of his umbrella, and, upon returning home, wrote an essay for the papers, full of sharp and witty observations.
The Englishman, taking his tea basket and a good deal of camping equipment, went to set up camp in the Orient, returning after a sojourn of two or three years with a fat volume full of raw, disorganized, and inconclusive facts which nevertheless had real documentary value.
As for the German, he was filled with disdain for the Frenchman’s frivolity and the Englishman’s lack of metaphysical ideas, and so he locked himself in his room, and there he drafted a multi-volume work entitled: The Idea of the Camel Derived from the Concept of the Ego.
Now, in MBTI and Jungian terms, can you guess which nationality corresponds to which type?
– The Frenchman‘s approach – the short, sharp and witty article, which had taken no more than an afternoon to research and write – corresponds to Extroverted Intuition, or Ne. The two types which use Ne the most are ENTP and ENFP. This is the approach of Michel Foucault, Gilles DeLeuze, Fernand Braudel, Luc Ferry and others.
– The Englishman‘s approach – spending several years in the field, compiling scores of raw data and then publishing it in a large bulky volume – corresponds to Introverted Sensation, or Si. The two types which use Si the most are ISTJ and ISFJ. However, with respect to demographics, ISxJs rarely become philosophers. The basis of the English method instead appears to have been formed by INTP types, who are often philosophically inclined and who also use Si. The “English Method” appears in the works of Charles Darwin and Adam Smith. (Darwin actually wrote a two-volume work full of disorganized details about acorn barnacles.)
– The German method – shielding yourself off from the world in order to see the psychological and metaphysical factors behind our immediate experience of reality – corresponds to Introverted Intuition, or Ni. The two types which use Ni the most are INTJ and INFJ. This is the approach of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, G.W.F. Hegel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, C.G. Jung and others. – That is why Marx said that even though he admired Darwin’s findings, his work was “enveloped in the crude English method.”
To give you an immediate example of the contrast, it has often been said that Nietzsche and Darwin delved into the same philosophical problems, but that each did so using his own method.
For many years, the German method was valued at a premium and considered the true approach to philosophy. However, in the 20th century, as the sciences become able to explain more and more of the domains of philosophy, the philosophies of Marx, Nietzsche, Hegel and the rest began to fall apart: The great speculative approach simply could not withstand the onslaught of incoming facts. As such, Thomas Hobbes spoke for many INxJs when he said that “all generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called ‘Facts.’ They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.” – On the sidelines, the works of Karl Popper helped finish them off, as he pointed out that the works of Marx, Hegel and others could never be proven or dis-proven, and as such they held little real value for our understanding of reality.
The 20th-century demise of the German method then paved the way for the primacy of the French method (1960-2000): Here the so-called postmodern Frenchmen arrived at the scene to say that while we cannot place our trust in the great German systems, nor can we place our trust in science. Thus, postmodern philosophers like Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and others positioned themselves as a sort of middlemen who would pick and choose tidbits of scientific facts and tidbits from the remnants of the German systems and synthesize these into a branch of critical postmodern philosophy. However, being critical of everything leads to a sort of anti-philosophy, or nihilism, and so postmodern philosophy mostly ended up claiming that we cannot know anything for sure.
Since 2000, however, the postmodern vision has been increasingly discredited, and as A.C. Grayling said, a lot of the future progress in philosophy now depends upon the future progress of the natural sciences. In later years, a lot of English and American-born ENTPs have actually taken it upon themselves to take the “raw, disorganized, and inconclusive facts which nevertheless have real documentary value” produced by the English method and to relay them to the public in accessible books on popular science. While these books present themselves as science books, they actually contain a great deal of speculation, and so they are still in some sense philosophy books. These are the books of Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker and Matt Ridley, to name but a few.
So does this mean that the days of philosophy are coming to an end? Hardly. Though philosophy can be said to have become less and less important in the course of the last 50 years, and though politicians are cutting back on philosophy grants, there will always be fields which are open for speculation by those who adopt the life of the scholar: At the time of Heraclitus and Parmenides, a prime question of philosophy was whether the world was round or not, or whether it was all made out of some single substance. Since then more and more fields of study have left the domain of philosophy and entered the domain of science. But as our scientific knowledge grows, new questions open up, giving us new philosophical disciplines like Evolutionary Psychology, the Philosophy of Quantum Physics, and so on.
Sorry but this post is shallow.
A self-referential comment if there ever was one. I quite enjoyed this post, which has no pretensions to anything spectacularly deep.
I fully agree with Patrick Harris
Thanks! The post was indeed written on a whim.
I don’t think the post is shallow any more.
Farr to mani tybos. :)
In the main article?
Yes. It put me off a little.
Good of you to say; will be fixed.
But you are all very naughty children; you should not be snooping around in blogs from 2011 that we have removed from the main site :P
Haha, then you should delete the posts or disable comments. :D I only found it because the other guy posted a comment today!
What other secret blog articles have you hidden??
It can be found using the search, so it isn’t really hidden.
This is not Jungian. First, the definitions are all wrong. Second, Jung’s theory doesn’t have Ni, Si, Ne, and all of that.
I don’t think anyone on this site realizes that cognitive functions contradict Jung and strictly not Jungian.
Both cognitive functions and MBTI contradict Jung. The reasons behind the differences are… absent. Probably a misunderstanding that caught on and no one cared or dared to change it.
Please don’t say it’s from Psychological Types then talk about Myers’ so called “cognitive functions”. In Jung there are 4 functions: thought, feelings, intuition, and sensation.
Sorry, but this is misinformation. Jung never presented the Myers functions. Jung only saw 4 functions. The person takes on the orientation not the function.
I tried explaining this to the author and he said it wasn’t Jung’s ideas. This article says otherwise.
It’s sad.
***This comment has been merged by an admin.***
You’ve spammed five one-liners saying the same thing. Are you a troll or just unable to argue your point?
“Ni, Si, etc.” is nothing except for Introverted Intuition, Introverted Sensation and so on. Jung himself says that if you have an Introverted Intuitive type, they’re going to have inferior Extroverted Sensation and so on. You should read more before spamming.
I’ve merged the other four one-liners you just posted on the site saying the same thing into this comment. I’ll respond below.
Response: Jung said 4 functions, 2 orientations. That’s what we say on the site. Beebe, Berens, Nardi and others say 8 functions, conflating functions and orientations. Your criticism seems to be directed at them, or confusing two approaches that are superficially similar with each other.
Jung also says there are differences between functions with different orientations, e.g. Te and Ti. What Jung does not do is work out the whole type in terms of functions and orientations in any specific manner. But if you piece together what he has said over his career:
– There’s one dominant function and one inferior. These will always be in the opposite directions Ne/Si, Fe/Ti and so on.
– The whole type has four functions, not eight.
– Between the dominant and inferior are the two auxiliary functions, of which one is usually (but not always) more developed than the other.
– In ‘Seminar of 1925,’ he says that the uppermost auxiliary sides with the dominant and the lowermost auxiliary sides with the inferior. I.e. an ISTP can have Ti-Si-Ne-Fe. Van der Hoop, who knew Jung well, agrees.
The thing that we do differently from Jung is simply that we follow the more modern model of EIEI / IEIE instead of Jung’s two suggestions of EIII / IEEE and EEII / IIEE.
So while you could definitely criticize us for not following Jung 100%, the things you have said are just wrong.
This link might be helpful to you:
https://www.idrlabs.com/articles/2015/06/function-models-for-skeptics-part-1/
Jung said 4 functions and 2 orientations, correct. The difference between Myers’ functions and Jung is the following:
In Jung, the there are main (extreme) function types (not cognitive functions), each of which can take on either of two functions as an auxiliary.
A function type, for example, is extraverted thinking. The function preference of extraverted thinking type is Thinking, not extraverted thinking. The difference between the introverted thinking type and the extraverted thinking type is the general attitude of consciousness being extraverted in one, and introverted in the other. He did not see thinking as two separate entities like Te and Ti.
The attitude of the unconscious will be opposing, so in extraverts it will be introverted, and vice versa. The inferior function of an extraverted thinker is feeling, not introverted feeling (as introverted feeling is a type not a function).
Basically you are using the 8 Myers functions as building blocks, just like Beebe does. The only difference is that Beebe also assigns the opposing ones their own separate existence.
What I mean by four functions is T, F, S, and N. What you mean by four functions is Te Si, etc.
Jung did say that the inferior of a type would take on the opposing attitude through the influence of the unconscious. But that is an unconscious process. Unconscious meaning that the person is not conscious of it. You cannot be conscious of your inferior opposing attitude but you may see its results in terms of bad relationships, criticism from others, or a psychotherapist pointing it out.
The conscious use of any function, which varies greatly from primary to inferior, is always according to the general attitude of consciousness. Jung said it clearly that an extravert is extraverted in every respect whether in thought, feeling, sensation or action.
From all that, the difference in assigning orientation to a function is by definition not a detail but a completely different typology.
And thank you for calling me a spammer.
The bulk of your reply is just semantics. If you think “Si” is substantially different from “Sensation with an introverted orientation” you have to spell out why.
This post goes more into how Jung saw the difference between Ti and Te: https://www.idrlabs.com/articles/2014/01/jung-in-plain-language-part-1-te-and-ti/ Yes, he says that it’s the same operation with different orientations; so do we. If we are to be charitable, we can say, yes, he probably thought that Ti and Te (again, just shorthand for “Thinking with an extroverted orientation”; “Thinking with an introverted orientation,” etc.) were a little more similar than we do, but the interpretation we’re advancing is still within the realm of what he said. On the other hand, one could also be uncharitable and point to how your rendition is steel-manning Jung. For example, you claim that Jung never sets apart Ti and Te. But in Psychological Types, he often refers to the same function as being of two kinds when the orientation is different:
Jung: “Whenever the chief value is given to the subjective process, that other kind of thinking arises which stands opposed to extraverted thinking, namely, that purely subjective orientation of thought which I have termed introverted.”
Furthermore, von Franz and van der Hoop, who worked first-hand with Jung and talked to him about the type theory, both advanced the same type of interpretations that we are doing. None of them had ever heard of Myers or Beebe.
Then you try to argue that we somehow don’t acknowledge that the inferior function is unconscious, but then, we’ve explicitly said that in multiple places on the site since 2010, and we even have an entire article dedicated to that matter: https://www.idrlabs.com/articles/2015/06/the-unconscious-nature-of-the-inferior-function/
Where did Jung say that an extrovert is extroverted in all respects? At any rate, he later redeemed himself saying that there was no such thing as a pure extrovert and that most people were less extreme than he had originally envisioned.
I called you a spammer because you wrote the same one-liner in five different places on the site. But I guess it’s also spammy to take up our time with criticisms that we have entire articles dedicated to answering.
In fact Jung repeated exactly the same ideas about type since 1921 until before his last interviews in the late 50’s.
Your defense of the function orientation as Jungian is puzzling, as Jung always spoke of 4 basic functions in his type theory (as well as other functions such as memory and action that are not incorporated in his type theory. Thinking in the extraverted attitude is different from thinking in the introverted attitude, but Myers defined thinking in the introverted attitude to extraverts, and vice versa. This is clearly an assignment of attitude to the functions not the person, which goes against Jung.
Myers had the general in the tent idea of introversion being in essence inaccessible to the world, and since she saw orientation belonging to the function, she read Jung’s description of how people are seldom all introverted or introverted as having two functions, one introverted, one extraverted, both conscious, and both establishing the balance.
In Jung, the general attitude of consciousness is neither all introverted nor all extraverted, except in extreme cases. His definition of introvert and extravert refer to the prevalent attitude, with both directions of the libido, or orientations, present in the conscious self at the same time. The attitude that overcomes is the general attitude of consciousness.
“If a man so thinks, feels, and acts, in a word so lives, as to correspond directly with objective conditions and their claims, whether in a good sense or ill, he is extraverted. His life makes it perfectly clear that it is the objective rather than the subjective value which plays the greater role as the determining factor of his consciousness. He naturally has subjective values, but their determining power has less importance than the external objective conditions” PT, The General Attitude of Consciousness
The further this attitude is intensified, the more unconscious resistance it faces from the opposite attitude.
“The attitude of the unconscious as an effective complement to the conscious extraverted attitude has a definitely introverting character. It focusses libido upon the subjective factor, i.e. all those needs and claims which are stifled or repressed by a too extraverted conscious attitude. It may be readily gathered from what has been said in the previous section that a purely objective orientation does violence to a multitude of subjective emotions, intentions, needs, and desires, since it robs them of the energy which is their natural right.” PT, Attitude off the Unconscious
“Complete assimilation to the object, therefore, encounters the protest of the suppressed minority, elements belonging to the past and existing from the beginning. From this quite general consideration it may be understood why it is that the unconscious claims of the extraverted type have an essentially primitive, infantile, and egotistical character.” PT, Attitude off the Unconscious
Jung also repeats the statement on the general attitude’s influence on every aspect of a person’s personality in the Definitions section:
“Everyone whose attitude is introverted thinks, feels, and acts in a way that clearly demonstrates that the subject is the chief factor of motivation while the object at most receives only a secondary value.”
“Everyone in the state of extraversion thinks, feels, and acts in relation to the object, and moreover in a direct and clearly observable fashion, so that no doubt can exist about his positive dependence upon the object”
*until before his death on his last interviews…
Also:
“One cannot be introverted or extraverted without being so in every respect. By the term ” introverted ” we mean that all psychic happenings take place in the way we posit as true of introverted people.” Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Also:
“Now a man may give preference to thinking whether he be extraverted or introverted, but he always uses it in the way that is characteristic of his attitude-type.” Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Also:
“I have worked out a fourfold classification corresponding to the functions of thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. Each of these functions varies according to the general attitude, and thus eight variants are produced.” Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul
It’s also interesting that Jung identified himself as an introvert, a thinker, and with a “great deal of intuition”, who had definite problems with feelings.
While you list him as an INFJ.
1: If you read his personal letters, he says that he refined his views on type from 1921. Von Franz, who knew him well, says the same thing.
2: Again, this link covers most of what you say: https://www.idrlabs.com/articles/2015/06/function-models-for-skeptics-part-1/ – you’re challenging us on something which we’ve written an article about, without having actually read the article.
3: I don’t really know what you want us to respond to this comment; you’re just saying the same thing as you’ve already said (and which I’ve already responded to).
4: As for the “all extroverts are only extroverted” quotes you provide in your first post, none of them definitively say what you take them to say. I.e. he is talking about states (“everyone in the *state* of extroversion) not dispositions. Furthermore, these quotes are from passages that are given to distinguish the overall orientation of the person’s consciousness. Even in the face of these quotes, one could easily make the argument Myers did.
5: But as I already said, yes, Jung suggested EEII / IIEE or EIII / IEEE. You don’t seem to have read Seminar of 1925. That text destroys your entire argument about functions not having orientations (in practice, not as a matter of definition), since he talks about the functions “siding” with each other, again i.e. EEII / IIEE. That, however, still leaves some room for your observation that to Jung, the orientation belongs to the individual, not the function, but given what Jung himself says about it, this difference simply has very few (or even no) practical consequences for the application of typology (beyond the different function models, which I’ve already linked you to an article explaining).
6: Jung self-identified as a Ti type, always, as our site makes clear. We just don’t agree with his self-identification. Most theorists and experts in the field don’t.
He doesn’t say state of extraversion. That is Myers not Jung.
I’ve brought you quotes from 1921, 1933, and 1957. He doesn’t say state of extraversion, he says according to the general attitude.
“Now a man may give preference to thinking whether he be extraverted or introverted, but he always uses it in the way that is characteristic of his attitude-type.” Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul 1933
I’m sorry I’m bothering you and that this site and the information in it may have some financial or personal investment and pointing out flaws is hurtful to you.
“This state is one of inferior extraversion…” (PT §163)
“We shall see in the course of our investigation that the state of introversion…” (PT §238)
“Everyone in the extraverted state…” (PT §710)
Yeah, we’re hurting real bad here. Over having to spend time on conceited comments when we already wrote an article on the matter, which you could have read before posting.
Oh, conceited now.
You have provided no evidence and simply throw “Jung changed his mind” like it’s evidence for anything.
Also your “state” you have quoted, is different from the state you claim supporting Myers. For example:
“We shall in the course of our investigation see that the state of introversion, in so far as it becomes habitual, always involves a differentiated relation to the world of ideas, while habitual extraversion entails a similar relation to the object”
When that occur, it’s called the “general attitude of consciousness” to which in speaking of the “general attitude type”:
“If a man so thinks, feels, and acts, in a word so lives, as to correspond directly with objective conditions and their claims, whether in a good sense or ill, he is extraverted.”
And
“Everyone whose attitude is introverted thinks, feels, and acts in a way that clearly demonstrates that the subject is the chief factor of motivation while the object at most receives only a secondary value.”
The article you link needs registration and when I did it asked for payment “Upon payment with PayPal you get instant access to the extended content.” It might be interesting for sure, but I’m not paying to see it.
I would suggest you would go back and read Jung without having to prove Myers. Just read Jung as Jung and see what he had to say.
It’s not my job to educate you on Jungian typology. Especially when you just assume we’re wrong because you haven’t read e.g. Seminar 1925 or Jung’s personal letters on typology, which, unsurprisingly, can be found in the volume ‘Letters.’
Jung’s books aren’t free. Myers’ books aren’t free. We provide 100+ articles for free. I don’t see the problem.
I already told you more than once that Jung shifted (effectively) between EEII/IIEE or EIII/IEEE. You can even find that in P.T. itself in the chapter on Nietzsche, and even more strongly in Seminar 1925. It is true (as I already said) that the attitude linguistically belongs to the person, not the function, but the counter-orientation in the unconscious means that the lower functions have (effectively) the opposite orientation. As I already said, it has almost no practical consequences whether the attitude belongs to the person or the function. The difference is our acceptance of what is today the standard model. Jung didn’t advocate this, but we say that in the article already.
“There is no such thing as a pure extravert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum. They are only terms to designate a certain penchant, a certain tendency. For instance, the tendency to be more influenced by environmental factors, or more influenced by the subjective factor, that’s all. There are people who are fairly well balanced and are just as much influenced from within as from without, or just as little.” – C.G. Jung Speaking (Princeton University Press 1977) p. 304
So more of the same condescending tone… thanks.
“There is no such thing as a pure extravert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.”
Yes, he defines the “general attitude” as a consistent tendency towards one way or the other. The temperament of the person is neither all introverted or extraverted, but somewhere in between.
That is the general attitude. An normal introvert in Jung is not someone fit for an insane asylum, but someone where introversion wins over.
The primary function follows the general attitude, which is not extreme. The auxiliary does not balance out the E/I, but the judging/perceiving attitude.
The more I or E is intense, the more the unconscious conjures up the opposing attitude for “compensation”. Compensation and balancing out are not the same thing. One is unconscious and erratic, the other is healthy and conscious.
And that all fits with how Jung never ascribed E/I attitude to functions, but saw functions interacting in an environment with a general attitude (whether balanced or imbalanced) and a compensatory unconscious (which gets more severe the less a person is balanced).
The functions are consciously working through the general attitude, and unconsciously acting out through the opposing attitude.
The EEII and EIII are things you are saying and applying to functions as an appendage.
What Jung described in his lectures is exactly what I’m saying. When an extravert has a differentiated function, it takes on the general attitude which leans towards extraversion. Undifferentiated functions will remain under the spell of the unconscious that is not introverted per (as there is no general attitude for the unconscious) but compensates with an introverted attitude. The more a function is developed and differentiated, like having an auxiliary, the more it is consciously integrated, and hence follows the -guess what- general attitude.
Due to the opposition between the types of judging among themselves, and the same for types of perceiving, the more one differentiates one, the other is neglected, making it easily remaining unconscious.
It’s not a change in Jung’s mind -it’s just two sides of difference from Myers. Again, read Jung as to read Jung, not to prove Myers.
“The auxiliary does not balance out the E/I, but the judging/perceiving attitude.”
I have already said that three times. Your reply is just repeating what you’ve said in your first message. In fact, *all* of what you say here we’ve answered already. You just keep repeating yourself. Maybe you have a learning disability or something.
You still haven’t demonstrated what the practical differences between e.g. an E<--- --->I orientation belonging to the individual and the EEII scheme belonging to the functions are. And honesty, I don’t feel like repeating myself anymore.
I’m repeating myself due to sufficient evidence of that you are not listening (nor answering).
When you separate thinking into Te and Ti, you are creating two new entities aside from the development of the individual. They now have their own life, represent skills, and prone to be mixed and matched among all types in any ad-hoc way. If you are using Ti to mean the differentiated thinking of an introvert, there wouldn’t be any quarrel with Jung’s ideas. Myers did not do that.
And speaking about Myers, beside her “schematic” ad-hoc model, her writing show a much closer and purer understanding of type and Jung than most online sources today. She believed she understood Jung, and she wasn’t a specialist per se (if I’m not one to ad hominem others based on societal credentials).
I’m an introvert. All my thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition are introverted. I don’t chase real world hunches, I don’t exist sensation wise in the world, I don’t think according to the world sees practical and legitimate. I don’t value the cultural feelings of others. I do it all as an introvert.
THe ESTP thinks in practical real-world directed manner. An ESTP doesn’t search the innate logical nature of existence. AN ISFP being a perceiver senses and emotes and feels second. etc.
I don’t have to change what the functions mean to fit with Myers. Schematic ad-hoc brute-force models that are not consistent with life or logic.
Then again I’m an introverted thinker. I may be asking too much.
And by the way, if you change the meaning of functions, and you do use on this site a modified meaning, the intuition observations Jung made about the relationships between these function no longer hold. Sorry.
*intuitive observations
@Muhammad
“… I don’t exist sensation wise in the world …”
Hi Muhammad, I’m just messaging to ask if you’d be interested in dropping by my university if you get the free time? We physics students would love to chat with you. :D
On a more serious note, I do recommend that you give this site a real chance. There’s some really insightful stuff on here, far more interesting and reflective of reality than anything Jung ever wrote (even the free material), in my opinion.
But if you want to just continue reading Jung and his historical perspective that’s great too. I don’t think anything’s going to come from your discussion with the Admins though, because you aren’t really talking about the same approach.
Good luck anyway in whatever you choose. :)
I pointed out inaccuracies in quoting Jung to support Myers when it helps the cause, to say that Jung said things he did not say about type. That’s all that I’m doing. I have admined many -yes, sadly many; with all the day wasted- promoting the “cognitive functions”, discussing them with people, using them to type people in real life, trying to find logic that supports them, arguing with Lenore Bentz for them, I did illustrations showing how Ni and Te and so on interact, and so on. I’ve given Myers and MBTI about 9 years for a go. The more one learns about this the more that essential problems come to surface.
I’m all for the efforts I see in others trying to promote psychological topics. Still, when you bring out problems, many people seem to prefer to assume you are trolling them, especially if they are in a group sounding off of each other (take Pod’Lair for example :) ).
I don’t think any amount of effort will change anything. People change when they want to. I came across this page like I did with Michael Pierce’s Youtube, and I respect and applaud their ambitions, but saw no reason of why not to criticize when I am capable of supporting my criticism. If I’m proven wrong, like many times in anyone’s life, I’m happy to change, even when insults are thrown in every other reply. Some things are clear as day -if they weren’t so clear for me when I on these guys’ side of the fence.
Engineer here. You physicists are awesome -as a group entity, not each one I’m sure. :)
@Mohammad
It’s interesting you should say that the more you learn about this the more essential problems come to the surface. For me, it’s the opposite — the more I learn, the more it all makes sense. :) I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts about the major problems you’ve found with this approach if you have the time (even if it might not be strictly relevant to this particular article haha).
I’m not sure I understand why it’s an important distinction whether someone says there are eight cognitive functions, or four functions each with two orientations? It seems to come to the same thing to me… And I’m not an expert on Jung (at all), but I have read a few things by him on types, and I think he DOES distinguish between introverted Thinking and extroverted Thinking (for example) — the difference between introverted and extroverted function orientations in Jung is big enough that they may as well be seen as eight separate-but-connected things. But I haven’t studied this for nine years. :)
Thanks. :) I have friends who study engineering, and I’m considering taking a course myself at some point!
If you read the chapter on Nietzsche in P.T. Jung says that he had conscious N and T, pointing inwards, which leads to unconscious F and S, pointing outwards. What you’re saying now is diverging from that. You say that as a Ti type, your other functions are also introverted. But Jung says that the F, S, and N of the Ti type have “an extraverted character.”
I get annoyed because you’re lecturing to someone (me) who has already addressed all of these things on our site. Yes, a lot of online content is bad, so what? We’re not responsible for that, just like you’re not responsible for what other people called Mohammad may have done. You’re lecturing into a void; to someone who knows this stuff already and has explicitly addressed it. If you want to write an article for general public perusement, be my guest. We might even host it on the site. But when you come on here, lecturing us about things we have already addressed, there’s an English word for that – blowhard.
I’ve already told you that Si, Se, etc. implies nothing but a shorthand for “Sensation with an introverted orientation,” “Sensation with an extroverted orientation,” etc. You’re just repeating yourself over and over like an… especial individual. Furthermore, our site specifically says that functions don’t represent skills. Again you bring the blowhard attitude, lecturing into a void.
My life is too short to keep telling you these same things.
“We’re not responsible for that, just like you’re not responsible for what other people called Muhammad may have done.”
A few years ago at my school, a boy called Muhammad stole a cake at lunch time. Everyone was shocked at this disgraceful act, and he lost some friends! I’m guessing this is the event you’re referring to? :)
Today’s insult: “blowhard”. ‘o’
Let me repeat again and see if it hits or misses this time around…
So the extraversion and introversion of an individual follow the “general attitude” not the function as have been repeated above plenty of time and with evidence cited.
I have also showed how that the conscious use of any function follows the general attitude, while the unconscious use follows the opposing attitude.
So now in case of Nietzsche; did he, as part of his personality, have extraverted sensation per se???
So besides the general theory lines, here’s a step by step example from Jung on the inferior feeling of an extraverted thinker (from PT):
“The relative or total unconsciousness of such tendencies or functions as are excluded from any participation in the conscious attitude keeps them in a relatively undeveloped state.”
Unconscious compensation: “To the extent that they are unconscious, they become merged with the remaining contents of the unconscious, from which they acquire a bizarre character.”
Parts of which the person is conscious: “To the extent that they are conscious, they only play a secondary rôle, although one of considerable importance for the whole psychological picture […] In so far as feelings allow themselves to be arbitrarily shaped and subordinated, they have to support the intellectual conscious attitude and adapt themselves to its aims.”
So supporting the conscious thinking attitude but…
“Only to a certain degree, however, is this possible; a part of the feeling remains insubordinate, and therefore must be repressed. Should the repression succeed, it disappears from consciousness and proceeds to unfold a subconscious activity, which runs counter to conscious aims, even producing effects whose causation is a complete enigma to the individual […] There are extraverted idealists, whose desire to advance the salvation of man is so consuming that they will not shrink from any lying and dishonest means in the pursuit of their ideal. […] Only an inferior feeling-function, operating seductively and unconsciously, could bring about such aberrations in otherwise reputable men.”
So you see, there is not one aspect of inferior feeling, but two; one is slightly conscious and being part of the individual’s conscious personality, the other is the unexploited psychic energy of feelings seized by the unconscious working on the opposing attitude, and in an erratic, compensatory manner, and most basically… unconscious.
Unconscious means unconscious. Jung said in the Richard Evans interview talking about the unconscious:
“The main thing is that they are really unconscious. If you are unconscious about certain things that ought to be conscious, then you are dissociated. Then you are a man whose left hand never knows what the right is doing, and counteracts or interferes with the right hand. Now such a man is hampered all over the place.”
and “The self is merely a term that designates the whole personality. The whole personality of man is indescribable. His consciousness can be described; his unconsciousness cannot be described, because the unconscious—and I repeat myself—is always unconscious. It is really unconscious; he really does not know it. And so we don’t know our unconscious personality. We have hints and certain ideas, but we don’t know it really.”
See, even Jung had to repeat himself: The unconscious is UNCONSCIOUS!
So an introverted thinker does not say “oh, I have extraverted feelings, you know” or answer personality discussions and quizzes saying “I am always connected to society’s values,” no he says “to the hell of society’s values -I am an introvert!”
On the other hand, for a psychoanalyst and a careful observer, these unconscious tendencies may be obvious, and showing themselves even if the person is unaware of them. The person may come of to others -if not to himself- as if thinking out his feelings consciously, serving his extraversion/introversion, but erratically exploding with feeling judgement of the opposite attitude.
How would one describe that for, say, an extravert? Is that conscious Fe coupled with unconscious Fi? Inferior Feeling is neither; it has its own character, as you well know. (For example, in the article above, “Si” is associated with allegedly “INTP” Charles Darwin, but let’s not nit pick about that.)
It is simply described as the person having an extraverted attitude, and compensating in an introverted attitude the unconscious psychic content. Worrying whether it is Fi or Fe is really an overkill and a misleading endeavour. People have temperaments, not functions.
For a psychoanalysis, the unconscious of an introvert (emitted unconsciously which defies the “cognitive function-axes” thing) may be readily seen as having extraverted inferior functions. That is different from saying that the person uses feeling and sensation in an extraverted way -they, their conscious ego, does not.
Again, this is already what this site is saying:
https://www.idrlabs.com/articles/2015/04/the-puerile-nature-of-the-tertiary-function/
https://www.idrlabs.com/articles/2015/06/the-unconscious-nature-of-the-inferior-function/