Showing posts with label Types. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Types. Show all posts

Saturday, April 21, 2018

Carl Jung: Classification did not interest me very much.




[Dr. Jung, he repeatedly made clear that his work on “Types” was not that of the “Classification of Individuals” as made quite clear in his letter to Mr. von Frange in 1960.]

Dear Mr. von Fange, April 1960

I have read your letter with great interest and I congratulate you on your attempt at further investigation in the field of typology.

It is a line of thought which I have not pursued any further, since my original tendency was not the classification of normal or pathological
individuals but rather the discovery of conceptual means deriving from experience, namely the ways and means by which I could express in a comprehensible way the peculiarities of an individual psyche and the functional interplay of its elements.

As I have been chiefly interested in psychotherapy I was always mostly concerned with individuals needing explanation of themselves and knowledge of their fellow-beings.

My entirely empirical concepts were meant to form a sort of language by which such explanations could be communicated.

In my book about types I have given a number of examples illustrating my modus operandi.

Classification did not interest me very much.

It is a side-issue with only indirect importance to the therapist.

My book, as a matter of fact, was written to demonstrate the structural and functional aspect of certain typical elements of the psyche.

That such a means of communication and explanation could be used also as a means of classification was an aspect which I was rather afraid of, since the intellectually detached classifying point of view is just the thing to be avoided by the therapist.

But the classifying application was-1 almost regret to say-the first and almost exclusive way in which my book was understood, and everybody
wondered why I had not put the description of the types right at the beginning of the book instead of relegating it to a later chapter.

Obviously the tendency of my book has been misunderstood, which is easily understandable if one takes into account that the number of those people who would be interested in its practical psychotherapeutic application is infinitely s mall in comparison with the number of academic students.

I admit that your statistical line of research is perfectly legitimate but it certainly does not coincide with the purpose of my book, which in my humble opinion aims at something far more vital than classification.

Though I have expressed my therapeutic views most emphatically only very few of my readers noticed them.

The possibility of classification seems to be far more attractive.

By this rather longwinded peroration I am trying to explain to you why I am more or less unable to give you any helpful suggestions in your specific enterprise, since my thoughts do not move on this line at all.

I am even sceptical in this respect.

I hold the conviction that for the purpose of any classification one should start with fundamental and indubitable principles and not
with empirical notions, i.e., with almost colloquial terms based upon mere rules of thumb .

My concepts are merely meant to serve as a means of communication through colloquial language.

As principles however I should say that they are in themselves immensely complicated structures which can hardly fulfil the role of scientific
principles.

Much more important are the contents conveyed by language than their terms.

Sincerely yours,

C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 550-552.

Carl Jung: It is not the purpose of a psychological typology to classify human beings into categories—this in itself




Carl Jung: It is not the purpose of a psychological typology to classify human beings into categories—this in itself would be pretty pointless. (

It is not the purpose of a psychological typology to classify human beings into categories—this in itself would be pretty pointless.

Its purpose is rather to provide a critical psychology which will make a methodical investigation and presenta- tion of the empirical material possible.

First and foremost, it is a critical tool for the research worker, who needs definite points of view and guide- lines if he is to reduce the
chaotic profusion of individual experiences to any kind of order.

In this respect we could compare typology to a trigonometric net or, better still, to a crystallographic axial sys- tem.

Secondly, a typology is a great help in understanding the wide variations that occur among individuals, and it also furnishes a
clue to the fundamental differences in the psychological theories now current.

Last but not least, it is an essential means for determining the “personal equation” of the practicing psycholo- gist, who, armed with an exact knowledge of his differentiated and inferior functions, can avoid many serious blunders in dealing with his patients. Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 986

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Dr. Jung's on the "Classification by Type"




The classification of individuals [By Type] means nothing at all. It is only the instrumentality, or what I call "practical psychology," used to explain, for instance, the husband to a wife, or vice versa. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 23.

I have never thought of my typology as a characterological method and have never applied it in this sense. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 129-130

In my book about types I have given a number of examples illustrating my modus operandi. Classification did not interest me very much. It is a side-issue with only indirect importance to the therapist." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 550-552

There lies the gravamen of the book, [Psychological Types] though most readers have not noticed this because they are first of all led into the temptation of classifying everything typologically, which in itself is a pretty sterile undertaking. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 186-187

Nor was it ever my intention to characterize personalities, for which reason I did not put my description of the types at the beginning of the book; rather I tried to produce a clear conceptual scheme based on empirically demonstrable factors. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 129-130

Hence my typology aims, not at characterizing personalities, but at classifying the empirical material in relatively simple and clear categories, just as it is presented to a practising psychologist and therapist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 129-130

There is no such thing as a schematic classification. ~ Conversations with Carl Jung and Reactions from Ernest Jones, Page 23.


Thursday, July 6, 2017

Explorations: Jung in England: Ghost and Personality Types By Vivianne Crowley




Explorations: Jung in England: Ghost and Personality Types By Vivianne Crowley

In 1920, Carl Jung, the father of Analytic Psychology, was invited to Britain to give seminars. In his leisure time he visited Tintagel Castle, the supposed birthplace of King Arthur, and mystical Glastonbury, where St. Joseph of Arimathea is reputed to have brought the Holy Grail for safekeeping. Jung’s intuitive mind had been open to the paranormal from a very early age. In Britain, he was in a land steeped in history—and in ghosts.

Ghosts


Jung disliked hotels, so he asked a friend to help him rent a cheap country cottage where he could stay on weekends. However, when he was at the cottage, he got little rest. On the first weekend, he woke to find a sickly smell pervading the bedroom. The next weekend, the smell was accompanied by a rustling noise of something brushing along the walls. It seemed to Jung that a large animal must be in the room. On the third weekend, there were knocking sounds. By now, most people would have given up and decided to spend their weekends elsewhere, but not Jung. On the fifth weekend, he woke up to find a hideous apparition beside him on the pillow. It was an old woman, part of whose face was missing.

Jung questioned the cleaners, who confirmed that the cottage was indeed haunted. This explained the suspiciously low rent and the cleaners’ reluctance to be there after dark. Not all of Jung’s colleagues were inclined to believe in ghosts. The colleague who had rented the cottage on Jung’s behalf was unimpressed with what Jung told him, so Jung challenged him to spend the night there. He tried, but was so terrified he did not even remain in the bedroom. He took his bed into the garden and slept outside with his shotgun beside him. Shortly afterward, the cottage’s owner had it demolished—it was impossible for anyone to live there.

Personality Types

One of Jung’s aims during his British seminars in 1920 was to refine his ideas about personality. In 1921, he published what is now the sixth volume of his Collected Works, entitled Psychological Types. In addition to two attitudes to the world, extroversion and introversion, Jung identified four personality types or functions: “sensation,” “intuition,” “thinking,” and “feeling.” Of these psychological types or functions, Jung wrote (Psychological Types 518):

For complete orientation all four functions should contribute equally: thinking should facilitate cognition and judgment, feeling should tell us how and to what extent a thing is important for us, sensation should convey concrete reality to us through seeing, hearing, tasting, etc., and intuition should enable us to divine the hidden possibilities in the background, since these too belong to the complete picture of a given situation.

The idea that there are four basic personality types is found in many cultures and is at the heart of astrology. The ancient Greeks believed that the whole of creation was made up of four elements—Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Personality was seen as influenced by these four elements—people were a mixture of the elements, but in each of us one element predominates, affecting our personality and body type. The personality types relate to the four elements: sensation to Earth, thinking to Air, intuition to Fire, and feeling to Water. The idea that intuition is fiery may seem strange, but if you consider Jung’s idea of intuition as akin to creative inspiration, then it begins to make sense.

The personality types also relate to the astrological signs through the four elements. In astrology, the Air signs are Aquarius, Gemini, and Libra; the Fire signs are Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius; the Water signs are Pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio; and the Earth signs are Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn. If a patient was particularly difficult to understand, Jung would send him or her to an expert astrologer to have a natal chart prepared, which Jung would then interpret psychologically. There is no simple relationship between sun sign and dominant personality type, but a skilled astrologer can predict the dominant personality type from the overall dynamics of the chart.

Four Functions

In order to function in the world, we need to receive information and then make judgments about how to act on it. Sensation and intuition are different ways of perceiving and receiving information. Thinking and feeling are judging functions. They are two different measuring instruments that help us to process the information we receive.

We cannot use two perceptual functions or two judging functions at the same time. The different modes of perceiving—sensation and intuition—are like looking at the world through different pairs of glasses with different lenses. We can only use one pair at a time. We call on the other when we need to, but it is less familiar to us and therefore we use it less skillfully. Similarly, we cannot use two judgment functions as measuring instruments at the same time. We use either thinking or feeling first to evaluate the data we receive, and then call on the other for extra information.

Jung’s ideas on personality types are clearly illustrated by four characters in the original Star Trek series: Mr. Spock, the thinker; Dr. McCoy or Bones, the feeler; Scotty, the sensate engineer; and Captain Kirk, the intuitive leader. Captain Kirk’s impulsiveness was always getting them into trouble, but his leaps of lateral imagination got them out again. When the team worked well together, they solved most of their problems.

Thinking and Feeling

Thinking tells us whether something is logical and rational, correct or incorrect. Thinking types enjoy analyzing information and making logical decisions. They tend to be good at science, mathematics, or business. Introverted thinking people like computers and classification systems. They can be good at playing the stock market and gambling. Extroverted thinkers love to organize others. They are born administrators.

Feeling tells us whether something is pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad, helpful or harmful. We need our feeling function when dealing with people and making relationships. Feeling people make good social workers who will move heaven and earth to help a deserving client. Feeling people build relationships of trust and are excellent parents, teachers, and ministers.

Sensation and Intuition

Sensation operates through the physical senses, and we use it to discover facts. Sensation types are usually practical people who spot physical clues that others miss. As doctors, they make good diagnosticians. As mechanics, they will often recognize the annoying engine noise that electronic faultfinding devices failed to identify. As fashion experts, they match color with an unerring eye. Sensation is reality-oriented, focused in the here and now. Sensate people remember names and dates and make great collectors, whether of stamps or antiques.

Intuition shows us meanings and implications. It tells us how situations are likely to develop in the future. Intuitives have hunches and “know” things, but do not know how they know. Intuition is the function of the imagination. People with extroverted intuition have an idea where society is going and will be at the leading edge of new technologies, businesses, fashions, and creeds. They love new ideas and new projects. Introverted intuition is the function of the creative writer and of the daydreamer. Intuitives can be content to dream their lives away without ever bringing their brilliant imaginings to fruition—they start more than they finish.

Dominant and Secondary Functions

Our dominant and secondary functions are the perceptual and judgmental functions that we use most in everyday life. These functions impact on our outer personality, affecting how people see us and react to us.

Relating to a person whose first and second functions are opposite to ours can create problems. Sensate thinkers are interested in practical matters, business, and politics. They will be easily bored by discussions about people’s feelings. Intuitive feelers are romantic. They like being told that their partner loves them. “Of course I love you,” the sensate thinker replies, “I bought you that new CD player, didn’t I?” Intuitive thinkers talk about abstract ideas and find sensate feelers materialistic. A sensate feeling parent may feel hurt by an intuitive thinking child’s apparent coldness. When she or he is in the middle of doing something complex on the computer, an intuitive thinker may find it irritating to feel obliged to respond to a sensate feeling person’s need for hugs. This does not make these relationships impossible, but it does make them more challenging.


Vivianne Crowley is a Jungian psychologist and the author of Jung, a Journey of Transformation: Exploring His Life and Experiencing His Ideas (Quest Books, 1999), from which this article has been edited.

Friday, May 19, 2017

Carl Jung on "Types" - Anthology



There lies the gravamen of the book, [Psychological Types] though most readers have not noticed this because they are first of all led into the temptation of classifying everything typologically, which in itself is a pretty sterile undertaking. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 186-187

Well, you see, the [psychological] type is nothing static. It changes in the course of life... Carl Jung, C.G. Jung, Speaking, Page 435.

I have never thought of my typology as a characterological method and have never applied it in this sense. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 129-130

So it is not the case at all that I begin by classifying my patients into types and then give them the corresponding advice, as a colleague of mine whom God has endowed with a peculiar wit once asserted. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 186-187

Whereas the extravert needs the object to bring his type to perfection and to cleanse his feeling, the introvert experiences this as a horrible violation and disrespect of his personality, because he absolutely refuses to be, so to speak, the chemical dry cleaner for the feelings of extraverts. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.

I have spoken more than once of the way an intuitive type can neglect reality, and you can, I am sure, supply an equal number of examples of the ways a feeling type can do the same thing. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 135

Each function type has a special way of viewing feeling, and is likely to find things about it which are untrue for the other types. Thus one of the points with respect to the functions that has been most combated is my contention that feeling is rational. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 134

Well, you see, the [psychological] type is nothing static. It changes in the course of life... Carl Jung, C.G. Jung, Speaking, Page 435.

As a rule, whenever such a falsification of type takes place . . . the individual becomes neurotic later, and can be cured only by developing the attitude consonant with his nature. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 560.

The classification of individuals [By Type] means nothing at all. It is only the instrumentality, or what I call "practical psychology," used to explain, for instance, the husband to a wife, or vice versa. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 23.

So, through the study of all sorts of human types, I came to the conclusion that there must be many different ways of viewing the world through these type orientations—at least 16, and you can just as well say 360. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 24.

Even though assignment to a particular type may in certain cases have lifelong validity, in other very frequent cases it is so dependent on so many external and internal factors that the diagnosis is valid only for certain periods of time. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 346-348

He thinks the sensation type spends his life with corpses, but once he has taken up this inferior function in himself, he begins to enjoy the object as it really is and for its own sake instead of seeing it through an atmosphere of his projections. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 90

Certainly seeing the top and the bottom is an introverted attitude, but that is just the place the introvert fills. He has distance between himself and the object and so is sensitive to types—he can separate and discriminate. He does not want too many facts and ideas about. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 94

The inferior function can only come up at the expense of the superior, so that in the intuitive type the intuitions have to be overcome, so to speak, in order for the transcendent function to be found. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 27

On the other hand, if the person is a sensation type, then the intuitions are the inferior function, and the transcendent function may be said to be arrived at through intuition. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 27

Out of these experiences that were partly personal, I wrote a little pamphlet on the psychological types, and afterwards read it as a paper before a congress. There were contained in this several mistakes which I afterwards could rectify. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 33

I watched the creation of myths going on, and got an insight into the structure of the unconscious, forming thus the concept that plays such a role in the Types. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 35

The author shows an amazingly sympathetic knowledge of the introvert of the thinking type, and hardly less for the other types. . . . Jung has revealed the inner kingdom of the soul marvelously well and has made the signal discovery of the value of phantasy. His book has a manifold reach and grasp, and many reviews with quite different subject matter could be written about it.” ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xi

So in my view an “ideally oriented type” is not an analyzed type at all, but an unanalyzed one, someone, for example, who only has a very good sailing boat, but without a built- in motor, thus a vehicle that does not move for hours when there is no wind. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86

The extravert (the ideal type) must realize his feeling, the corresponding introvert his thinking. In this process, the extravert notices that his feeling is pregnant with thoughts; the introvert, that his thinking is full of feelings. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142

His [Freud] general way of living was a genuinely introverted style, whereas Adler, whom I met as a young man, being of my age, gave me the impression of a neurotic introvert, in which case there is always a doubt as to the definite type. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302

As you know, Freud himself was neurotic his life-long. I myself analyzed him for a certain very disagreeable symptom which in consequence of the treatment was cured. That gave me the idea that Freud as· well as Adler underwent a change in their personal type. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302

Certainly strife and misunderstanding will always be among the props of the tragi-comedy of human existence, but it is none the less undeniable that the advance of civilization has led from the law of the jungle to the establishment of courts of justice and standards of right and wrong which are above the contending parties. It is my conviction that a basis for the settlement of conflicting views would be found in the recognition of different types of attitude — a recognition not only of the existence of such types, but also of the fact that every man is so imprisoned in his type that he is simply incapable of fully understanding another standpoint. Failing a recognition of this exacting demand, a violation of the other standpoint is practically inevitable. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 847

We know that there is no human foresight or wisdom that can prescribe direction to our life, except for small stretches of the way. This is of course true only of the "ordinary" type of life, not of the "heroic" type. The latter kind also exists, though it is much rarer. Here we are certainly not entitled to say that no marked direction can be given to life, or only for short distances. The heroic conduct of life is absolute—that is, it is oriented by fateful decisions, and the decision to go in a certain direction holds, sometimes, to the bitter end. ~Carl Jung, CW 7, Para 72

Experience has convinced me that there are not only different temperaments (“types”), but different stages of psychological development, so that one can well say that there is an essential difference between the psychology of the first and the second half of life. Here again I differ from the others in maintaining that the same psychological criteria are not applicable to the different stages of life. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 762



Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Carl Jung: It is not the purpose of a psychological typology to classify human beings into categories—this in itself would be pretty pointless.




It is not the purpose of a psychological typology to classify human beings into categories—this in itself would be pretty pointless.

Its purpose is rather to provide a critical psychology which will make a methodical investigation and presentation of the empirical material possible.

First and foremost, it is a critical tool for the research worker, who needs definite points of view and guide- lines if he is to reduce the
chaotic profusion of individual experiences to any kind of order.

In this respect we could compare typology to a trigonometric net or, better still, to a crystallographic axial system.

Secondly, a typology is a great help in understanding the wide variations that occur among individuals, and it also furnishes a clue to the fundamental differences in the psychological theories now current.

Last but not least, it is an essential means for determining the “personal equation” of the practicing psycholo- gist, who, armed with an exact knowledge of his differentiated and inferior functions, can avoid many serious blunders in dealing with his patients. Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 986

Monday, March 13, 2017

Carl Jung on the “Type Problem.”




Dear Friend,

When two opposed types discuss the type problem, the greatest part of the discussion is taken up by talking and understanding at cross- purposes.

Language here reveals its incredible incapacity of reflecting the finer nuances that are indispensable for under- standing.

Thus, when it comes to matters of psychology, every linguistic sign can mean both one thing and its opposite.

When you speak of the extravert and the feeling of an “identité mystique,” then naturally many things I said about the extravert do not apply.

What I was actually talking about was the “ideally oriented” extravert, and by “ideal” I do not mean “ideal” in the sense it is used in expressions such as “ideal aspirations” and “ideal convictions,” but “ideal” in the sense of “corresponding to one’s principle.”

Here the term“ideal” also implies that the ideal type is an imaginary or abstracted type that does not exist in reality, because a real person naturally also has the other mechanism within himself,

with the help of which he can take the edge off what is all- too sharp in the “ideal.” The more “ideal” a case is the more pathological it is.
You are perfectly right, therefore, in assuming that I am speaking mainly of “coarse” or “pathological” persons, among whom the “ideally oriented” can be found.

The term “ideal” lays an unintentional man trap.

In contrast to these cases, you are speaking of the compensated ones, where the situation is of course different.

But then again you are mainly speaking of how a case “should be,” and not how it “is,” whereas I proceeded from the assumption that we were talking about the “types” themselves, and not about “compensated” cases, in which the type problem is actually harder to identify in my opinion than in pure cases.

But anyway, since you have hifted this to a discussion of the compensated case, I will go along with this differ- ent program.

On this basis, my judgement about experiencing via the object is of course no longer valid, because with the help of compensation the extravert can very easily “realize” his feeling via the object without violating it in the least.

This “realization” is a process taking place within the subject, and so much inwardly that the object, as you rightly say, often does not notice it at all.

Now this is precisely what I call the “view on the subjective plane.”

This realization proceeds from compensation, but not according to the principle of this type, for extraversion goes outward to the object, and not inward into the subject, which is introversion.

The realization of the feeling goes to the subject and is thus a process of introversion.

Atthe same time it is also a thinking process, however, since realization means that I juxtapose the feeling as an object, differentiating myself from it.

Without this differentiation, I am not able to see what is happening, for then, being indistinguishable from it, I will be the process itself.

“Realization,” as the term already implies, is an “objectivation” of the process, without which apperception is not possible at all.

This apperception of the process is the attainment of self- knowledge or, in other words, the view on the subjective plane.

Abstract feeling, being of a hypothetical nature like all abstraction, is not a violent action in itself.

Taken as a feeling in itself, abstract feeling is a virtue and supreme refinement, just like the abstract thinking of the introvert.

ts violent character is revealed only in its influence on the object. That is why we must let the object have the last word in this matter.
When I violate the extravert with my abstract thinking, this is a fact, and this fact cannot be dismissed even if I insist that the other is merely thinking concretistically.

In this case he has the last word, and I will have to realize that I have to be careful with my virtue so as to avoid harm.

Abstract thinking and feeling are not violent in themselves, nor do we experience them as such, because civi- lized man has long unlearned to attribute his various complaints to the pressure of domestication.

On closer consideration, however, abstraction in itself is also an act of violence against the disparate phenomenon.

For in order to achieve abstraction, we pour what is separate and manifold into a flask, heat it up, and melt it, and thus force the volatility of the matter into the template.

In that way we create a spiritus, which is an abstraction.

The elements in the flask complain about violent treatment, because for them distillation runs counter to their nature.

We often forget how we achieved our virtues and take our achievements for granted, thinking they would be a blessing for others, too. (Cf. the Negroes and the blessings of civilization. Good examples of this are the Negro republics, and the exemplary social dignity of the Negro in the United States: “for colored people only”— naturally.)

Of course, it is the horse’s fault if it cannot pull a railway train; why is it so weak! Someone could point out, however, that a man who harnesses a horse to a railway train is committing an act of violence and is an idiot to boot.

What I want to say is that the explanation for the question of violence cannot be found only in what is pitiably concretistic.

You have complicated the matter considerably by basing the discussion on the compensated type.

But since I am letting myself be “stimulated by the object,” I will try to do justice also to the complicated situ- ation.

We surely agree in assuming that the “coarse,” “pathological,” or “ideally oriented” extravert violates the ob- ject by his direct and exclusive relation to it.

This crude form of violence naturally disappears to the extent the extravert abstracts his feeling, by which the latter becomes spiritualized, which is a true sublimation process (“from one bride- bed to another harried”).

There are things to which we cannot do justice completely with abstract thinking, and which we even violate if we subject them to abstract thinking.

Equally there are things that must not be subjected to abstract feeling.

Someone like the pure type, who has advanced from the crude to the secondary state, that is, to the abstraction of his adaptive organ, is nevertheless still capable of violence, but in a more refined and all the more cruel way, in that the introvert forces everything to fit into his intellectual pattern, and the extravert into the emotional one, since both of them are rationalists in their whole structure, even though they affect the contrary.

When the two meet they are a perfect match so long as they do not try to understand each other psychologically.

Everything will be fine, for instance, when the hardships of life make such heavy demands on them that they have to direct most of their concentration to the struggle for existence, and therefore cannot make any efforts to assert themselves as individual beings.

When there is no longer such immediate necessity, however, so that they turn to look at one another, they are convinced that they have never understood each other.

The intellect of the one comes up against the other’s concretistic “representation,” which he finds utterly dis- agreeable, and the feeling of the latter comes up against the other’s concretistic “sensation,” which he finds equally disagreeable.

Then, at best, there follows savior- like suffering, an educating, coercing, correcting, “fathering,” and “mother- ing” of the other, heroic feats of love of nearly inestimable proportions.

And then comes the well-known story of the Jew without a train ticket, whom the conductor wanted to throw out at every stop.

When a passenger finally asked him: “Where are you actually going to?” the poor man replied: “To Karlsbad— if my constitution can stand it.”

The mistake that is being made is quite obvious: each wants to better the other.

This is the objective plane of viewing things.

This missionary attitude is all very Christian but is extremely annoying to the introvert. He will kick the missionary out.

The extravert’s reaction is very clearly demonstrated in your letter: in your opinion, it would be a mistake if we wanted to teach the extravert to think, and the introvert to feel.

You maintain the opposite standpoint, namely, to let things be and, at most, further one’s innermost tendency— thinking in the introvert, and feeling in the extravert.

As you so accurately describe it for the case of the extravert, this leads to “realization,” which is nothing else but thinking about feeling.

This is how he learns thinking.

You have witnessed a famous case of this kind, in which a distinguished extravert was put, by an introvert de pur sang, into the saddle that is so characteristic of the extravert, on which he then galloped off to those adventures in which he learned to “realize.”

This was not taught to him.

He learned it by himself, because he had no other choice.

This is precisely— and pray forgive me— viewing things on the subjective plane.

As you told me, however, a certain other extravert tried to directly impose thinking on the former, which he took very much amiss, as we know, just as an introvert worth his salt will resist with might and main all attempts from the outside to impose and force feeling on him. The dignity of man— an essential notion still to be learned by all missionaries!

It is a remarkable fact that the more you develop the extravert’s feeling, believing to thus enhance your feel- ing into the object, the less the object is actually comprehended, for the object requires not only to be felt into but also sensation and thinking.

The latter two cannot, as we know, on any account be replaced by feeling- into.

That is why raising the level of feeling leads, as you correctly say, to a feeling- into the subject, as the neces- sary exaggeration of the feeling makes the subject’s lack of activity in thinking and sensation felt.

Gently but persistently, this vacuum sucks the libido back from feeling into and thereby enforces “realization,” which, as I have already emphasized, is precisely viewing things on the subjective
plane.

I completely agree with your supposition that the missionary activity the two types exercise on one another leads not to a deepening of the personality at all but only to a good adaptation to reality.

I have always defended this principle, namely, that one should not proselytize the other but should give him the opportunity to grow from what is his very own.

In my humble opinion, the famous case of a certain extravert quoted above is a good example of this; at the same time this case is probably evidence of the fact that there is no essential difference between your method and mine on this point.

When you say that the act of “deepening of the personality” has merely to do with feeling, you obviously see only the dynamic side of the process, that is, the progress in the development of love.

But you are forgetting that it is precisely “realization” through which a deepening of the personality is achieved.

“Realizing” is an introverting process, an objectifi cation; it is gaining insight, making something conscious, un- derstanding, hence an intellectual process.

Someone who, without “realizing,” always continued to fly on the wings of his feeling, would be, and remain

to be, an incurably extraverted “dud.”

It is just as typical of the extravert to underestimate and fail to notice his own introversion process, as it is of the introvert to underestimate and fail to notice his extraversion
process.

So long as the extravert only feels but does not realize, the will naturally have a very inadequate relation to the object, and that is why his “object” will not correspond to reality at all, but will be a subjective fantasy.

Someone who just feels does not think, but fantasizes.

Through feeling- into, the fantasy is transferred or projected into the “object,” but the actual object is thus dis- torted.

If the object is endowed with reason, it will clearly see that it represents merely a fantasy to the other. When the other finally understands the real nature of the object, he cools off considerably.

This naturally offends the object, particularly if it was hoping to get something from the extravert’s feeling, and it will feel disappointed and deceived.

It is exactly as if a very scientifically oriented doctor tre

I can understand the patient when he assumes that he has simply served as a guinea pig for a theory, that is, for a scientific fantasy.

The progress of scientific theory is certainly a great and noble thing, but there seem to be good reasons why experiments are conducted with guinea pigs rather than with humans.

In a refined person, the violent act has only become more refined, which just makes it that bit more devil- ish.

Therefore, you are quite correct in saying that the way indicated by you runs parallel to that of a neurosis, that is, to the way of the “coarse” and “pathological” extravert.

It nearly seems to me as if you were still of the opinion that, for example, I would analyze dreams on the subjective plane only.

Since I cannot provide you with evidence from my ongoing analyses, as you know nothing about them, I must revert to that famous case mentioned above, in which you have witnessed my method— which you suggest in your letter— put into practice.

The relation to the object that resulted from that analysis seems to have had a not inconsiderable influence on the further course the development of this extravert took.

He has often been heard talking of Tristan and Iseult, of Faust and Helen, etc.

It is a well- known fact that man is also capable of accepting something as true without having seen it with his eyes and touched it with his hands.

It is this truly human capacity that spares him a number of highly unpleasant experiences.

The average person seems to be satisfied, for example, by the theoretical reasoning that it is dangerous to stick his head out of an elevator on its way up.

He does not need to get his head torn off for the sake of experience.

It would also be a rather daring undertaking for someone to actually try out and see if it were really morally impossible for him to commit a murder.

There are a great many things that cannot, or need not, be experienced via the object.

For all these things we need the symbolic view on the subjective plane— if, that is, these tendencies are not to succumb irretrievably to repression again.

But when an actual experience via the object is possible, or even indicated, only a completely fatuous person would want to enforce a symbolic and subjective interpretation.

I guess you do not count me among such pigheaded solipsists; it would also run counter to what you have experienced.

As far as the behavior of the object toward the violence of the extravert is concerned, to which you object, you are thinking completely extravertedly about it, and are suppress ing the object anew.

You really cannot dictate to the object how it ought to react, and which reaction would be the right one. Such good intentions may be appropriate among extraverts but not in the relation between the types.

I must emphasize that an introvert reacts in just the way I said. This is what happens and what is.

The introvert couldn’t care less if this has any effect at all on the extravert, because he is no extravert who worries about such effects.

I am talking about what is, and not about what would be desirable.

When the introvert reacts accordingly to how he is blindly attacked and abused as a fantasy by the other, he forces him, as you rightly say, to consciously bring out his tendency toward violation, which makes the extravert finally realize that he has such a tendency.

He forces him to give up his feelings— yes, he does—and then the extravert is forced to start thinking.

In that way he achieves, and here you are right again, adaptation to reality, which cannot be accomplished without thinking and sensation.

Once he has achieved adaptation, he at last has his hands free for his own use.

He can then try out his violence and his feeling- into on himself for a change in order to deepen his personal- ity.

His former extraversion to the object was so exaggerated because his adaptation to it was so highly inadequate.

The deficit forced him to make ever- greater expenditures. Once adaptation is achieved, his libido can turn inward.

Of course, the introvert never fancies that by his self- defense he is deepening the other’s personality, nor does he defend himself for this reason; he really does it only not to be destroyed himself.

It is only the extravert who can see this in a different light, as he is convinced from the outset that he has the other’s best interest in mind, and that everything he does is beneficial for the other’s well- being.

This role of the savior

This infantile humbug and has to be nailed down as such.

In my opinion, you have touched upon something very important with your idea that an association of like types is more conducive to a deepening of one’s own personality than an association of different types.

Just as I am absolutely convinced that it is mandatory for adaptation to reality that the two opposed types confront each other unreservedly, I also believe that a deepening of the personality, with all its irrational values, can take place only by associating with the same type.

Interference of the opposite type is certainly a painful disturbance, for everything that represents the highest meaning and value for the one side is utmost nonsense and without value for the other.

The directions of the irrational psychological processes are actually diametrically opposed. What the extravert calls human is just “all too human” for the introvert.

What the introvert calls human is airy and gaseous for the other.

This discrepancy makes it quasi impossible for the two, because of the irritating difference in tone, to go to- gether in the irrational developmental process.

It is another question whether the irrational process in the opposed types does not bring to light a product that is equally valuable to each of them, although the values they fi nd in it are opposed to one
another.

This question must be left open for the time being.

I find your schema of attitudes of the analyst disagreeable, because I myself could never adopt something like this.

I am as I am, and that also in analysis.

I do not know whether it is necessary for the extravert to play a role, nor do I know whether I may not unconsciously play a role myself— after all, one can never know things like that. I would not be surprised to find, however,

that it may be the specific task of the extravert, in his feeling attitude toward the other, to make appropriate corrections in the object in order to eliminate his typical violence.

Certainly the introvert has to do something similar in the intellectual sphere.

As the case may be, he must be either reserved or forthcoming with his thoughts.

I would not know at all how to tune in to the individual task of the patient— for how could I be so vain as to know what his task is?

I would feel sorry for a patient whose task I thought I knew a priori, or at least more or less in advance, because then I would be on my best way to be giving that sort of counseling that the Freudian school has always imputed to me.

Nothing can be done against projections, however.

If in my last letter I talked primarily about the inferior extravert, you talk about the inferior introvert when it comes to matters of self- knowledge.

Without doubt, there is a danger of cheating ourselves out of a really full life by philosophizing.

I have a very tolerant attitude toward such people, however, because in my experience there are quite a num- ber of people who are rendered relatively harmless by contenting themselves with a surrogate of life.

There are also such useless and objectionable seeds in man that living a half-life, which leaves these seeds un- developed, is by far preferable to their full development.

I am not inclined to believe in man as a unum et bonum et perfectum.

Hence, I’m also against proselytizing—unless it is for monism, abstinence, the Salvation Army, pacifism, or the YMCA.

So whoever turns the idea of self- knowledge into a pseudoidea, and fraudulently abuses it to escape himself, has probably good reasons to do so.

An honest man, who also has a certain amount of courage, will never use self-knowledge as a surrogate for life.

His nature would not permit it.

But as we all are deficient in a certain sense, namely, when measured against an ideal, self-knowledge does actually serve us not to commit a number of wrongs and stupidities, which would inevitably follow from the deficiency of our nature.

I am sorry to have attacked my beloved Goethe in my last letter with regard to his statement about self-knowledge.

True, it was very disrespectful, but all the same I did have a point in taking the verba magistri not too seri- ously, since Goethe himself has provided the rebuttal of his own position as shown by the beautiful quote in your last letter.

It is difficult to argue with such masters, because in their honesty they always state also the respective oppo-

site somewhere else.

Just think of Goethe’s diametrically opposed statements on women!

The words of the fathers are a fine thing— so long as we do not use them as arguments.

It follows from all this that your criticism of self-knowledge refers to a concept that is actually a caricature of its real meaning.

This inferior concept has nothing to do with what I called the view on the subjective plane.

But I acknowledge your right to stress the existence of an inferior concept and use of self- knowledge just as emphatically as I underlined and defended the existence of a concretistic perception of extraverted feeling operations.

Toward the other, one tends to take a position based on our experience on a par with the average of previous incidences and is little inclined to trust him a priori to really have the more perfect in mind.

The experience of what goes on around us every day has made us so cold, however, that we still do not ex- pect anything good to come out of Nazareth.

The less we are trusting each other, the more proofs we get that this trust is indeed unjustified.

It seems to me that we might now have reached an agreement on this point, after having exposed our mutual mistrust—based on unshakable experience— so emphatically.

So let me turn to another point in which I differ from your view, or rather from what your written words (sic!)say. The difference starts with your idea that “genius” would be a weapon against the unconscious.

It would be easy to demonstrate that genius also offers the greatest opportunities of falling victim to the pow- ers of the unconscious.

Genius is both: the capacity to unlock the unconscious, and the capacity to give its elements a visible form

In the very rare case this operation is successful without destroying the person in question (and you know how rarely this happens), we suddenly believe that genius is a superb weapon against the ensnaring powers of the unconscious.

But in the more frequent case that these very capacities devour the person who has them and lead to an un- timely death or lingering illness, we believe that genius is also a terrible snare.

I tend to think that the number of geniuses is not all that inconsiderable, but that the number of those who are not destroyed by their genius is infinitesimal.

It does not help to say that it is precisely those few who are the “true” geniuses, while the ones who were de- stroyed had not been true geniuses in the first place.

When we know how thin the thread is, on which the sword above the head of the genius is suspended, we can only say: this one has barely managed to escape by the skin of his teeth, and the other did not make it by a hair’s breadth.

Even the so-called true genius carries wounds close to his thread of life.

Neither the genius nor the average person can get through life unscathed, but only the genius is affected to a much, much higher degree.

Genius is as little a substitute for analysis as “experience.”

A “healthy person” is never driven by his experience “to unite with his unconscious.” With this view you would deny analysis the right to exist altogether.
According to your view the significance of analysis seems to be limited to a psychological technique that, for pathologically sensitive people, is a partial substitute for a life they find impossible to lead, and which offers healthy people some help in coping with their conflicts.

In the former case, analysis serves as the dressing of a wound; in the latter, as a motor oil.

I readily concede that even great Caesar might have found it necessary to stop up a bung hole somewhere, and that the halls in the Louvre offer an excellent opportunity for “physical exercise,”but I deny that this is Caesar’s or the Louvre’s “greatest value.”

I am more than ready to acknowledge and admire all the useful things that make life possible and easier, but that the usefulness of a work of culture should be its “highest value” is completely beyond
me.

As I do not want to immediately sin against my abovementioned principle of implicit trust, I assume that what you really meant was that this is precisely not its highest value.

If this so highly praised experience alone would suffice, what would then be the point of science and other cultural achievements, with all their intrinsic values beyond the question of usefulness?

Someone who in his experience also experiences his unconscious has by no means united with it— unless, that is, he knows it.

The process of attaining knowledge covers many fields and is possible only with the help of those formulas that have been elaborated and handed down by the history of ideas over several millennia.

This treasure trove is called science, without which knowledge is impossible.

An animal lives its unconscious, and is completely united, even identical, with it.

What is missing is only knowledge, seeing things from the subject’s point of view. In this knowledge— that is, in what analysis is in itself, regardless of its usefulness— lies its “greatest value”; its true value is that it is a standpoint beyond experience, out of the reach of the rationalistic intentions of those who want to make it the servant of their own incompetence.

When somebody says: “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” the meaning of this statement lies in the ideal of Chris- tian love, and not in the thought that it is also of the greatest practical value to raise this Machiavellian principle of “do ut des” to a religious ideal.

Similarly, it would be a grave injustice against the spirit of the achievement that we call analysis to limit its highest value to its usefulness for our lives.

Seen in the light of day, it is also clear that it could not provide this practical service at all if it did not have precisely the value I emphasized.

“Life is not the highest of goods,” and least of all that which cures a few neurotics and shortens some conflicts for a few healthy people.

But lest you arrive at the opinion that I underestimate the practical usefulness of analysis, let me conclude by saying that I am as skeptical of knowledge without usefulness, as I am of usefulness without well-founded knowledge.

Knowledge without usefulness adorns philosophical chessboards and produces fat volumes for venerable libraries.

Usefulness without meaning fills pockets and the churches of Christian Science.

The value of analysis, however, is not only that it is of practical use but that it is also a living knowledge in and by itself. Thinking is life just as much as doing is.
Thinking is not merely a “realization” of life; life can also be a “realization” of thinking.

As to your concluding remark, I really must add for the sake of poetic justice that I did not invent that legend of the sailing-motor-airplane- monster, but that by alluding to the Platonic myth I only wanted to emphasize, ever so delicately, that this monster is hardly viable, precisely because of its ideal nature.

I hardly believe that I will go to the hell that has so very amiably been intended for me, only because I find the sailingmotor-airplane- dragon an impossible ideal.

Surely Sisyphus was an idealist, wasn’t he?

With best regards,

your Jung Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114