Dr. Evans: Dr. Jung, another set of ideas, original with you and very well known to the world, center around the terms "introversion" and "extroversion." I know that you are aware that these terms have now become so widely known that the man on the street is using them constantly in describing members of his family, his friends, and so on. They have become probably the psychological concepts most often used by the layman today.
Dr. Jung: Like the word "complex"—I invented it too, you know, from the association experiments—this is simply practical, because there are certain people who definitely are more influenced by their surroundings than by their own intentions, while other people are more influenced by the subjective factor.
Now you see, the subjective factor, which is very characteristic, was understood by Freud as a sort of pathological auto-egotism.
Now this is a mistake. The psyche has two conditions, two important conditions.
The one is environmental influence and the other is the given fact of the psyche as it is born.
As I told you yesterday, the psyche is by no means tabula rasa here, but a definite mixture and combination of genes, which are there from the very first moment of our life; and they give a definite character, even to the little child.
That is a subjective factor, looked at from the outside.
Now if you look at it from the inside, then it is just so as if you would observe the world.
When you observe the world, you see people; you see houses; you see the sky; you see tangible objects.
But when you observe yourself within, you see moving images, a world of images generally known as fantasies.
Yet these fantasies are facts.
You see, it is a fact that the man has such and such a fantasy; and it is such a tangible fact, for instance, that when a man has a certain fantasy, another man may lose his life, or a bridge is built.
These houses were all fantasies.
Everything you do here, all this, everything, was fantasy to begin with, and fantasy has a proper reality.
That is not to be forgotten; fantasy is not nothing.
It is, of course, not a tangible object; but it is a fact nevertheless.
Fantasy is, you see, a form of energy, despite the fact that we can’t measure it.
It is a manifestation of something, and that is a reality.
That is a reality, like for instance, the Peace Treaty of Versailles, or something like that.
It is no more; you can’t show it; but it has been a fact.
And so psychical events are facts, are realities.
And when you observe the stream of images within, you observe an aspect of the world, of the world within, because the psyche, if you understand
it as a phenomenon that takes place in so-called living bodies, is a quality of matter, as our bodies consist of matter.
We discover that this maer has another aspect, namely, a psychic aspect.
And so it is simply the world from within, seen from within.
It is just as though you were seeing into another aspect of matter.
That is an idea that is not my invention.
The old credos already talked of the spiritus atomis, namely, the spirit that is inserted in atoms.
That means psychic is a quality that appears in matter.
It doesn’t matter whether we understand it or not, but this is the conclusion we come to if we draw conclusions without prejudices.
And so you see, the man who is going by the external world, by the influence of the external world—say society or sense perceptions—thinks that he is more valid, you know, because this is valid, this is real; and the man who goes by the subjective factor is not valid, because the subjective factor is nothing.
No, that man is just as well based, because he bases himself upon the world from within.
And so he is quite right even if he says, "Oh, it is nothing but my fantasies."
And of course, that is the introvert, and the introvert is always afraid of the external world.
This he will tell you when you ask him.
He will be apologetic about it; he will say, "Yes, I know, those are my fantasies."
And he has always resentment against the world in general.
Particularly America is extroverted.
The introvert has no place, because he doesn’t know that he beholds the world from within.
That gives him dignity, and that gives him certainty, because it is the psyche of man. Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 22.
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