Jung, Myers, Keirsey, etc. on Jung’s Type

39 Comments

1. I have been reading the “Red Book” and I totally agree with you guys on this one, although I rarely disagree, you guys are like the gold standard for me on celebrity types :). There is no doubt in my mind that Carl Jung is an INFJ. Of course I am also an INFJ so i might be biased but i have a best friend who is an INTP and also another who is ISTP and his behavior’s and attitudes resemble neither.

2. I can see why Carl Jung wouldn’t classify himself as an INFJ though. As with all INFJ’s we tend to get very wrapped up in the emotions and ways of thinking of our very close friends, I actually tested INTJ when i first took the MBTI, probably resulting from my life long childhood friend being an ENTJ. When I am with him I have a tendency to have a cold cynical sense of humor like he has.

3. Please could you precise where von Franz said that Jung was N dom ? I know an interview where she says “thinking intuitive type” for Jung and for herself, are you alluding to that ? Thanks

4. What interview is that? That would be very interesting to us.

   We were quoting her ‘Lectures on Jung’s Typology’:

   An intuitive type, for instance, will generally have a strong desire to fix his active imagination in clay or in stone, making it materially visible in some way. Otherwise it will not seem real, and the inferior function will not come in. Jung, being an intuitive, discovered it first by the need to build little clay and stone castles, and from that experience he discovered the problem that is constellated by the fourth function.

5. I’m an INFJ and I would agree with Jung’s perception of himself as an INTP. The dense and deep philosophy and logical reasoning contained in his books such as “Psichological Types” can only be achieved through an out of this world introverted thinking. Jung tells stories about how he (at a very young age) would get really mad about teachers who thought his paperworks were a copy of some scientific author. So my argument is that such logical reasoning, such power to use philosophical references can only come by a dominant introverted thinking.

6. The apparent paradox concerning his typing himself can easily be resolved: he isn’t the author of the MBTI, and understanding him to have typed himself as INTP is in fact an anachronism. His saying he is a thinker would only refer to his description of the “Introverted thinking” type, which, in MBTI terms, is roughly INxx.

7. No.

8. No? Can you elaborate? From my understanding Jung and Myers used the same terms differently, esp. “intuition.”

9. There are some minor differences, as there are between *all* theorists in this field, but in essence, they’re in agreement. The proprietors of the MBTI acknowledge the view to this day that: “Type dynamics is central to type theory, is considered the core of the MBTI typology.” Four letter codes are only anachronistic if one rejects the functions, as Keirsey does. Read more here: https://www.idrlabs.com/articles/2015/06/function-models-for-skeptics-part-1/

   Jung repeatedly said he was a Ti type, i.e. ITP. Now there is a very good case to be made for him as an Ni / INJ type and therefore people try to stretch and bend what he said to avoid the precarious situation of having to disagree with him on his self-assessment.

10. Well the ‘minor’ differences leads MBTI to call him introverted intuitive while he calls himself introverted thinker. This seems more likely than he having somehow botched typing himself according to his own theory. Surely someone would’ve discussed it with him in case he made such a mistake.

    Surely you’ll be the first to acknowledge the difference in using “intuition” between Myers and Jung is far from being minor. And a reading of description of the introverted thinking type still allows for INFJ. This has nothing to do with whether the functions are real or not.

11. Edit: …And a reading of Jung’s description of the introverted thinking type still allows for MBTI INFJ

12. Myers called him ITP and the proprietors called him ITP *or* INJ. You seem to imply that there is some official MBTI assessment of Jung as INJ.

13. Even some of Jung’s own associates, who had nothing to do with MBTI, have suggested that Ni dominance is the better fit. Hence it is more reasonable to conclude that the problem is not with the minor differences between Myers and Jung, but with Jung himself.

14. All I’m saying is that if a seasoned practitioner of MBTI calls him INFJ it doesn’t necessarily contradict him typing himself “Introverted thinking.” I didn’t mean anything “official” by MBTI.

15. As I said, insofar as the proprietors still say that: “Type dynamics is central to type theory … the core of the MBTI typology.” Then Jung calling himself a Ti-dominant, Fe-inferior does most positively contradict INJ.

16. About his associates:is it known whether those associates actually discussed it with him? Maybe they got Jung’s theory wrong (or at least not tot Jung’s liking).

    And about the proprietors: saying type dynamics is central to the core of the MBTI typology doesn’t necessarily mean every detail in Jung’s theory has been adopted.

17. No, it is not known whether they discussed it with him. Still, they had all of their training in typology from Jung himself and had no knowledge of the MBTI. This should reasonably falsify your hunch that the problem is Jung-MBTI differences.

    As the article I linked you to says, there is a definite function arrangement built into the MBTI, so all of the relevant details are the same.

18. All the relevant details? like which functions are assigned extroversion/introversion and what function is about introspection and everything else? I guess I’ve been seriously misinformed, then. Never mind.

19. I have been looking at introverts and extraverts (mainly the latter, being an introvert myself) over the past eight years. I have been following an insight by the Australian psychologist Dorothy Rowe which makes it much easier to spot extroverts. I looked at Ch10 of Psychological Types for the first time three weeks ago and was amazed by how many insights Jung had which I had arrived at myself. I am pretty sure he was an extravert.

20. I agree that INTP makes more sense than INFJ, not because of the overwhelming Ti he is said to have had (which i don’t discount) but his lackluster, inferior feeling function, which he admitted himself even late in life. This is directly counter to the INFJ conclusion, but fits well in line with the common INTP stereotype.
    I’ve seen elsewhere accusations that Jung’s persistent metaphysicallity and religiousness as, by themselves, disqualifying factors to his INTPness. This, I think, is a foolish and (probably) spiteful stereotype of INFJ’s by XNTXs, who tend to think themselves as imperviously logical and the seers of truth.
    I’d argue that you can’t type a person simply on their finished ideas. Rather the process they used to reach whatever conclusions they make is more indicative of their underlying personality and temperament. If you look at Jung you this way it is clear that he was throughout his life, constantly unsure of his theories, always attempting to improve them.
    This is, at least in my experience, another point in favor of INTP over INFJ. INFJ are, if anything, principled and devoted to their ideals and ideas, more so certainly than INTPs, who are often flip-floppers and don’t like to double down on their ideas. This second point is based mostly off my own personal experience with the two types.
    Lastly I’d like to bring up the on going ‘war’ for Jung’s type that has apparently been taking place online for some time. The introverted ‘Rationals’ and ‘Diplomats’ have both claimed him, and (whether they say it openly or not) like to believe this because they see themselves in his writing and ideas. They thank him for the identity he’s indirectly conferred upon them in the form of mbti and wish to enshrine themselves ‘Jung’s heirs’ thusly. This situation is made worse by the fact that INTP’s and INFJ’s are the likely the mbti communities most active members, perhaps exactly because they both sense a great degree of truth behind the types. I’d like to refer back to my earlier implied statement that one conclusion may be reached via different thought processes. And, so muddled by the passage of time (and the emergent inconsistencies of typology, Jung’s “true” type may never be definitively known.

    **DISCLAIMER** As an ENTP, I’m not exactly impartial, but I’d thought I’d weigh in.

21. I agree with the INFJ assessment of Jung and disagree with INTP for several reasons.

    First, as J. Butler says, it’s an anachronism. Jung created the system but did not fine-tune it, so there’s no way he could’ve identified himself along the lines of four letters in sequence.

    Second, I’m INTP and Jung has a depth of understanding of other people’s feelings and sentiments that I would find incredibly unusual, though certainly not impossible, nevertheless still quite a spectacular phenomenon, to see in an INTP.

    Third, Jung’s reasoning is logical yes, but rather than following trains of thought and leaving feeling to the side, he tends to follow trains of feeling and connect them with logic afterward, if he connects them at all.

    He reads very much like the other I-F philosophers who expect (and succeed) their feelings to speak for themselves and are not concerned with making logical justification for every fragment of every sentence of every proposition they write, when they use propositions at all.

22. Should’ve read admin comments first. I rescind my first statement above, but maintain the second two.

23. Hi. Is it possible for an INTP type to make value judgements using Fi. I mean they aren’t supposed to be like that in theory but if a a person identifying as INTP makes Fi based value judgements on certain topics, how would that be explained? Also why are so many people listed as INFJ are listed as INTP (Jung, Wittgenstein, Jefferson, Spinoza, Schopenhauer & Chomsky) and INTJ (Plato, Bohr, Jefferson, David Fincher etc) elsewhere. But examples of vice versa aren’t there.

24. Scoop,

    No, an IxTP doesn’t make value judgments using Fi. Could you give a few examples of what you think are Fi value judgements in ITP? It would be easier to answer your question then.

    The reason for the typing difference across different sources is that typing people is a very imprecise activity and some people are simply better than others at it. But nobody is perfectly right about all their typings (at least nobody I can think of).

    As for the specific typing discrepancies for Ni types, I think it is because many people have no idea how that function works so they just use it for people they believe are very intelligent J types.

25. Scoop,

    I remember having a similar problem where I used to think I could be INFP because I evaluate the worth of things in a very personal way – which going by the descriptions is Fi.

    But I don’t think that is really the difference between INFPs and INTPs. EVERYONE values different things differently, some more differently than others, so it isn’t too relevant to typology.

    The real difference to me between the two is that INFPs tend to have a worldview very powerfully shaped by these value judgements that they see as true or real in some way (even while knowing their own Fi world is very different to other people’s). INTPs on the other hand don’t view the world through this kind of lens and don’t trust their emotional evaluations as a source of truth at all, and probably more naturally see them as a messy, uncontrollable source of trouble – and they will sometimes be very frustrated by, and maybe afraid of, the IFPs ways of judging things.

    INTPs are probably much better off in the safer domain of evaluating movies or music (perhaps developing their emotional-yet-logical evaluations to a very refined degree and becoming experts in their field) than applying their Fi-ish evaluations in the “real world”.

    Just my opinion though. :)

26. The reason I felt I made value judgement (recently) was choosing a political candidate who is against what I believe is the logical government structure. I chose him because I “felt” he was sincere and even though I don’t fully agree with his agenda I felt he might actually bring good change. I feel that was Fi-like judgement. I agree with you otherwise.

    The point on why so many INFJ are typed INTx wasn’t that I think those individuals aren’t INFJ but rather the frequency with which it happens. More than half the INFJ in CT’s list are contested elsewhere but the same doesn’t happen with INTx. I was just wondering why?

27. Well that doesn’t really sound like Ti, that’s for sure. :)

    Well, real INTPs are pretty darn easy to spot, and rarely get typed as anything other than INTx. Same goes for INTJs. But INFJs and ISFJs are probably the most “T-ish” Feeling types, and it’s pretty easy to mistake them for INTPs when they have a well developed Ti function and aren’t as “nice” as more outgoing Fe types (this seems more common in IFJ men I think).

28. To be honest that was more of a one off case which made me wonder. Never thought of myself as IFJ. The test on CT had me as a strong INTP and I also got INTP with the “INTJ or INTP test”. But I’ll look into it. :)

29. Scoop,

    I wasn’t suggesting you were IFJ. I don’t know you enough to have an opinion on that. :)

    I was just answering your question.

30. Sorry! My mistake… :| I misunderstood. I guess some one can have difficulty seeing Fe in someone like Wittgenstein but then again most people have a very shallow understanding of Fe who only take it as superficial emotions. Thanks!

31. Hey! Where did that “Why Jung is INFJ: Part 1” article go… I saw it appear couple of hours back and wanted to read it later only to not find it here anymore… :O what happened?

32. Hi Scoop,

    Which article do you mean? :)

33. It was published a bit too early. Will be back sooner or later. /Eva

34. Ohh okay. So I wasn’t seeing things. Looking forward to it then. :)

35. Yeah, me too :)

36. He’s totally infj

37. He’s of course Ni-dom, he’s very emotive, he’s a strong Ti thinker. No arguments are needed if you know how to read a book (his ones).

38. Yep

39. I tend to think that the issues of Jung not perceiving himself clearly and funny points in his thoughts on type that deserve revision are often enough related.

    When interpreting Jung’s statements on his own type, and whether he was misinterpreting himself by his own system, I find it very necessary to note that there are hard to resolve inconsistencies, and these aren’t just isolated, they are often recurring and prominent.

    If we really take Jung at face value, his portrayal of thinking types as “intellectuals” (which in modern lingo is often much closer to N) does offer him an excuse to shy away from some of the strange, not very intellectual behaving, genuinely hunch-oriented/little conceptualizing intuitive introverts (like the infamous woman with a perceived snake in her abdomen) he gave as examples.

    However, this doesn’t really work very well, as being an intellectual is overly broad.

    This leads to my comment, which is that often, it isn’t that you couldn’t make a case, based on Jung’s own thoughts, that he typed himself correctly going by the letter of his interpretations. It’s just that there is a lot of other stuff he said about types that could lead to an alternate interpretation, and which he never really addressed sufficiently to rule out.

    In this case, the whole intellectual thing just doesn’t work great. It’s way too broad a category! Further, an examination of Jung’s own work suggests he thought there was something called *conceptual* intuition, which is conceptual, but still significantly more associative than strictly logical.

    In practice, I find a lot of intuitive-dominants (the way I think), particularly with T-auxiliary (since that forces fixing the logic of their thoughts down somewhat more) actually engage in this sort of conceptual thought, and aren’t just extreme out-of-the-blue intuitives of the sort Jung gave as an example.

    There are other places where Jung’s own interpretation of the typology seems basically to give him an “excuse” to type as something implausible. His portrayal of introverted sensation types virtually says outright that they go away from sensation’s truest principle of operation, and this is one of many instances where the distinction between introvert-extravert and intuition-sensation blurs in his typology. I mean, at what point does perceiving a glimmer of the unconscious within sensory contents, as introverted sensation types a-la Ch. X did, begin to become difficult to separate from intuitive activity? I know Jung tried to make that clear, but it never seemed to be his strongest point. I’ve often felt his later change to thinking-intuitive self-typing from thinking-sensation might be suggestive of this confusion.

    (For what it’s worth, I think the attitude of the auxiliary is again a place where a close reading of Jung leaves things ambiguous — while it’s much more likely he thought the top 2 functions are in the same attitude when both developed, what’s not clear is whether that’s the only consistent reading of his theory. For, technically, he was unclear about whether the auxiliary should be considered conscious: on the one hand, he says only one function can have sovereignty, and thus be conscious, but he loosely refers to two *conscious functions* later….seems we have to rely on the latter to get the same-attitude conclusion.)

    So I’m often left with the view that on the one hand, yes there are differences in Jung’s thinking from modern ones, and they are relevant to how he reasoned his type. But, it’s not to say that all Jungians who heard his typology emphasized the same things he did, and even if they were offering a reasonable interpretation of his type, they easily could come to a different view of his type.

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