THE JUNG-SCHMID LETTERS

THE JUNG-SCHMID LETTERS

Between 1915 and 1916, Jung conducted an extensive theoretical discussion on the question of psychological types with his colleague, Swiss psychiatrist, Hans Schmid-Guisan (1881–1932).

Schmid first met Jung in 1911 and subsequently went to Zürich to study with Jung and became a member of the Zürich group of the International Psycho-Analytical Association. In 1913 he started a psychiatric practice in Basel, and was amongst those who sided with Jung when he broke with Freud. They maintained a close friendship up until Schmid’s early death in 1932.


The value of this correspondence is that it shows how Jung’s thinking about the type problem evolved from his original 1913 conception, rigidly linking extroversion to feeling and introversion to thinking, toward the flexible four-function two-attitude model we know today, which is the basis of the most widely used paper and pencil test of normal personality orientation in the world today, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.

As increasing numbers of type practitioners begin to take the measure of Jung’s insights into how consciousness organizes itself through functions of thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition, which it deploys, according to its preference, in either extroverted or introverted ways, it has become important to learn how Jung arrived at this understanding.