Carl Jung: Intuition as a Function of Perception

Intuition Intuition as the function of unconscious perception is wholly directed upon outer objects in the extraverted attitude. Because, in the main, intuition is an unconscious process, the conscious apprehension of its nature is a very difficult matter.

In consciousness, the intuitive function is represented by a certain attitude of expectation, a perceptive and penetrating vision, wherein only the subsequent result can prove, in every case, how much was [p. 462] ‘perceived-into’, and how much actually lay in the object.

Just as sensation, when given the priority, is not a mere reactive process of no further importance for the object, but is almost an action which seizes and shapes the object, so it is with intuition, which is by no means a mere perception, or awareness, but an active, creative process that builds into the object just as much as it takes out.

But, because this process extracts the perception unconsciously, it also produces an unconscious effect in the object.

The primary function of intuition is to transmit mere images, or perceptions of relations and conditions, which could be gained by the other functions, either not at all, or only by very roundabout ways.

Such images have the value of definite discernments, and have a decisive bearing upon action, whenever intuition is given the chief weight; in which case, psychic adaptation is based almost exclusively upon intuition.

Thinking, feeling, and sensation are relatively repressed; of these, sensation is the one principally affected, because, as the conscious function of sense, it offers the greatest obstacle to intuition.

Sensation disturbs intuition’s clear, unbiassed, na[umlaut]ive awareness with its importunate sensuous stimuli; for these direct the glance upon the physical superficies, hence upon the very things round and beyond which intuition tries to peer.

But since intuition, in the extraverted attitude, has a prevailingly objective orientation, it actually comes very near to sensation; indeed, the expectant attitude towards outer objects may, with almost equal probability, avail itself of sensation. Hence, for intuition really to become paramount, sensation must to a large extent be suppressed.

I am now speaking of sensation as the simple and direct sense-reaction, an almost definite physiological and psychic datum. This must be expressly established beforehand, because, if I ask the intuitive how he is [p. 463] orientated, he will speak of things which are quite indistinguishable from sense-perceptions.

Frequently he will even make use of the term ‘sensation’. He actually has sensations, but he is not guided by them per se, merely using them as directing-points for his distant vision. They are selected by unconscious expectation. Not the strongest sensation, in the physiological sense, obtains the crucial value, but any sensation whatsoever whose value happens to become considerably enhanced by reason of the intuitive’s unconscious attitude.

In this way it may eventually attain the leading position, appearing to the intuitive’s consciousness indistinguishable from a pure sensation. But actually it is not so.

Just as extraverted sensation strives to reach the highest pitch of actuality, because only thus can the appearance of a complete life be created, so intuition tries to encompass the greatest possibilities, since only through the awareness of possibilities is intuition fullysatisfied.

Intuition seeks to discover possibilities in the objective situation; hence as a mere tributary function (viz. when not in the position of priority) it is also the instrument which, in the presence of a hopelessly blocked situation, works automatically towards the issue, which no other function could discover.

Where intuition has the priority, every ordinary situation in life seems like a closed room, which intuition has to open. It is constantly seeking outlets and fresh possibilities in external life.

In a very short time every actual situation becomes a prison to the intuitive; it burdens him like a chain, prompting a compelling need for solution. At times objects would seem to have an almost exaggerated value, should they chance to represent the idea of a severance or release that might lead to the discovery of a new possibility.

Yet no sooner have they performed their office, serving intuition as a ladder or a bridge, than they [p. 464] appear to have no further value, and are discarded as mere burdensome appendages.

A fact is acknowledged only in so far as it opens up fresh possibilities of advancing beyond it and of releasing the individual from its operation. Emerging possibilities are compelling motives from which intuition cannot escape and to which all else must be sacrificed. ~Carl Jung, Psychological Types, Chapter 10.

Carl Jung on the Extraverted Feeling Type

The Extraverted Feeling-Type

In so far as feeling is, incontestably, a more obvious peculiarity of feminine psychology than thinking, the most pronounced feeling-types are also to be found among women. When extraverted feeling possesses the priority we speak of an extraverted feeling-type. Examples of this type that I can call to mind are, almost without exception, women. She is a woman who follows the guiding-line of her feeling. As the result of education her feeling has become developed into an adjusted function, subject to conscious control.

Except in extreme cases, feeling has a personal character, in spite of the fact that the subjective factor may be already, to a large extent, repressed. The personality appears to be adjusted in relation to objective conditions. Her feelings correspond with objective situations and general values. Nowhere is this more clearly revealed than in the so-called ‘love-choice’; the ‘suitable’ man is loved, not another one; he is suitable not so much because he fully accords with the fundamental character of the woman -as a rule she is quite uninformed about this — but because [p. 449] he meticulously corresponds in standing, age, capacity, height, and family respectability with every reasonable requirement.

Such a formulation might, of course, be easily rejected as ironical or depreciatory, were I not fully convinced that the love-feeling of this type of woman completely corresponds with her choice. It is genuine, and not merely intelligently manufactured. Such ‘reasonable’ marriages exist without number, and they are by no means the worst. Such women are good comrades to their husbands and excellent mothers, so long as husbands or children possess the conventional psychic constitution.

One can feel ‘correctly’, however, only when feeling is disturbed by nothing else. But nothing disturbs feeling so much as thinking. It is at once intelligible, therefore, that this type should repress thinking as much as possible. This does not mean to say that such a woman does not think at all; on the contrary, she may even think a great deal and very ably, but her thinking is never sui generis; it is, in fact, an Epimethean appendage to her feeling. What she cannot feel, she cannot consciously think. ‘But I can’t think what I don’t feel’, such a type said to me once in indignant tones. As far as feeling permits, she can think very well, but every conclusion, however logical, that might lead to a disturbance of feeling is rejected from the outset.

It is simply not thought. And thus everything that corresponds with objective valuations is good: these things are loved or treasured; the rest seems merely to exist in a world apart. But a change comes over the picture when the importance of the object reaches a still higher level. As already explained above, such an assimilation of subject to object then occurs as almost completely to engulf the subject of feeling. Feeling loses its personal character — it becomes feeling per se; it almost seems as though the [p. 450] personality were wholly dissolved in the feeling of the moment.

Now, since in actual life situations constantly and successively alternate, in which the feeling-tones released are not only different but are actually mutually contrasting, the personality inevitably becomes dissipated in just so many different feelings. Apparently, he is this one moment, and something completely different the next — apparently, I repeat, for in reality such a manifold personality is altogether impossible. The basis of the ego always remains identical with itself, and, therefore, appears definitely opposed to the changing states of feeling. Accordingly the observer senses the display of feeling not so much as a personal expression of the feeling-subject as an alteration of his ego, a mood, in other words.

Corresponding with the degree of dissociation between the ego and the momentary state of feeling, signs of disunion with the self will become more or less evident, i.e. the original compensatory attitude of the unconscious becomes a manifest opposition. This reveals itself, in the first instance, in extravagant demonstrations of feeling, in loud and obtrusive feeling predicates, which leave one, however, somewhat incredulous. They ring hollow; they are not convincing. On the contrary, they at once give one an inkling of a resistance that is being overcompensated, and one begins to wonder whether such a feeling-judgment might not just as well be entirely different. In fact, in a very short time it actually is different. Only a very slight alteration in the situation is needed to provoke forthwith an entirely contrary estimation of the selfsame object.

The result of such an experience is that the observer is unable to take either judgment at all seriously. He begins to reserve his own opinion. But since, with this type, it is a matter of the greatest moment to establish an intensive feeling rapport with his environment, redoubled efforts are now required [p. 451] to overcome this reserve. Thus, in the manner of the circulus vitiosus, the situation goes from bad to worse. The more the feeling relation with the object becomes overstressed, the nearer the unconscious opposition approaches the surface. We have already seen that the extraverted feeling type, as a rule, represses his thinking, just because thinking is the function most liable to disturb feeling. Similarly, when thinking seeks to arrive at pure results of any kind, its first act is to exclude feeling, since nothing is calculated to harass and falsify thinking so much as feeling-values. Thinking, therefore, in so far as it is an independent function, is repressed in the extraverted feeling type. Its repression, as I observed before, is complete only in so far as its inexorable logic forces it to conclusions that are incompatible with feeling.

It is suffered to exist as the servant of feeling, or more accurately its slave. Its backbone is broken; it may not operate on its own account, in accordance with its own laws, Now, since a logic exists producing inexorably right conclusions, this must happen somewhere, although beyond the bounds of consciousness, i.e. in the unconscious. Preeminently, therefore, the unconscious content of this type is a particular kind of thinking. It is an infantile, archaic, and negative thinking.

So long as conscious feeling preserves the personal character, or, in other words, so long as the personality does not become swallowed up by successive states of feeling, this unconscious thinking remains compensatory. But as soon as the personality is dissociated, becoming dispersed in mutually contradictory states of feeling, the identity of the ego is lost, and the subject becomes unconscious.

But, because of the subject’s lapse into the unconscious, it becomes associated with the unconscious thinking — function, therewith assisting the unconscious [p. 452] thought to occasional consciousness. The stronger the conscious feeling relation, and therefore, the more ‘depersonalized,’ it becomes, the stronger grows the unconscious opposition. This reveals itself in the fact that unconscious ideas centre round just the most valued objects, which are thus pitilessly stripped of their value. That thinking which always t

Unconscious thought reaches the surface in the form of irruptions, often of an obsessing nature, the general character of which is always negative and depreciatory. Women of this type have moments when the most hideous thoughts fasten upon the very objects most valued by their feelings. This negative thinking avails itself of every infantile prejudice or parallel that is calculated to breed doubt in the feeling-value, and it tows every primitive instinct along with it, in the effort to make ‘a nothing but’ interpretation of the feeling.

At this point, it is perhaps in the nature of a side-remark to observe that the collective unconscious, i.e. the totality of the primordial images, also becomes enlisted in the same manner, and from the elaboration and development of these images there dawns the possibility of a regeneration of the attitude upon another basis. Hysteria, with the characteristic infantile sexuality of its unconscious world of ideas, is the principal form of neurosis with this type. ~Carl Jung, Psychological Types, Chapter 10

Carl Jung on Feeling in Psychological Types

Feeling: Feeling in the extraverted attitude is orientated by objective data, i.e. the object is the indispensable determinant of the kind of feeling. It agrees with objective values. If one has always known feeling as a subjective fact, the nature of extraverted feeling will not immediately be understood, since it has freed itself as fully as possible from the subjective factor, and has, instead, become wholly subordinated to the influence of the object. Even where it seems to show a certain independence of the quality of the concrete object, it is none the less under the spell of. traditional or generally valid standards of some sort.

I may feel constrained, for instance, to use the predicate ‘beautiful’ or ‘good’, not because I find the object ‘beautiful’ or ‘good’ from my own subjective feeling, but because it is fitting and politic so to do; and fitting it certainly is, inasmuch as a contrary opinion would disturb the general feeling situation.

A feeling-judgment such as this is in no way a simulation or a lie — it is merely an act of accommodation. A picture, for instance, may be termed beautiful, because a picture that is hung in a drawing-room and bearing a well-known signature is generally assumed to be beautiful, or because the predicate ‘ugly’ might offend the family of the fortunate possessor, or because there is a benevolent intention on the part of the visitor to create a pleasant feeling-atmosphere, to which end everything must be felt as agreeable.

Such feelings are governed by the standard of the objective determinants. As such they are genuine, and represent the total visible feeling-function. In precisely the same way as extraverted thinking strives to rid itself of subjective influences, extraverted feeling has also to undergo a certain process of differentiation, before it is finally denuded of every subjective [p. 447] trimming. The valuations resulting from the act of feeling either correspond directly with objective values or at least chime in with certain traditional and generally known standards of value.

This kind of feeling is very largely responsible for the fact that so many people flock to the theatre, to concerts, or to Church, and what is more, with correctly adjusted positive feelings. Fashions, too, owe their existence to it, and, what is far more valuable, the whole positive and wide-spread support of social, philanthropic, and such like cultural enterprises.

In such matters, extraverted feeling proves itself a creative factor. Without this feeling, for instance, a beautiful and harmonious sociability would be unthinkable. So far extraverted feeling is just as beneficent and rationally effective as extraverted thinking. But this salutary effect is lost as soon as the object gains an exaggerated influence. For, when this happens, extraverted feeling draws the personality too much into the object, i.e. the object assimilates the person, whereupon the personal character of the feeling, which constitutes its principal charm, is lost. Feeling then becomes cold, material, untrustworthy.

It betrays a secret aim, or at least arouses the suspicion of it in an impartial observer. No longer does it make that welcome and refreshing impression the invariable accompaniment of genuine feeling; instead, one scents a pose or affectation, although the egocentric motive may be entirely unconscious. Such overstressed, extraverted feeling certainly fulfils æsthetic expectations, but no longer does it speak to the heart; it merely appeals to the senses, or — worse still — to the reason. Doubtless it can provide æsthetic padding for a situation, but there it stops, and beyond that its effect is nil. It has become sterile.

Should this process go further, a strangely contradictory dissociation of feeling develops; every object is seized upon with feeling- [p. 448] valuations, and numerous relationships are made which are inherently and mutually incompatible. Since such aberrations would be quite impossible if a sufficiently emphasized subject were present, the last vestige of a real personal standpoint also becomes suppressed. The subject becomes so swallowed up in individual feeling processes that to the observer it seems as though there were no longer a subject of feeling but merely a feeling process. In such a condition feeling has entirely forfeited its original human warmth, it gives an impression of pose, inconstancy, unreliability, and in the worst cases appears definitely hysterical. ~Carl Jung, Psychological Types, Chapter 10.

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

Dr. Jung on misconceptions about "Types.

Dr. Evans: Of course, one of the very common misconceptions, at least in my opinion, about your work among some of the writers in America
is that they have characterized your discussion of introversion and extroversion as suggesting that the world is made up of only two kinds of
people, introverts and extroverts. I’m sure you have been aware of this. Would you like to comment on it? In other words, do you perceive of
the world as one made up only of people who are extreme introverts and people who are extreme extroverts?

Dr. Jung: Bismarck once said, "God may protect me against my friends; with my enemies I can deal myself alone."

You know how people are.

They have a catch word, and then everything is schematized along that word.

There is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert.

Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.

Those are only terms to designate a certain penchant, a certain tendency.

For instance, the tendency to be more influenced by environmental influences, or more influenced by the subjective fact—that’s all.

There are people who are fairly well-balanced who are just as much influenced from within as from without, or just as little.

And so with all the definite classifications, you know, they are only a sort of point to refer to, points for orientation.

There is no such thing as a schematic classification.

O􀁛en you have great trouble even to make out to what type a man belongs, either because he is very well balanced or he is very neurotic.

The last one is hard because when you are neurotic, then you have always a certain dissociation of personality.

And then too, the people themselves don’t know when they react consciously or when they react unconsciously.

So you can talk to somebody, and you think he is conscious.

He knows what he says, and to your amazement you discover after a while that he is quite unconscious of it, doesn’t know it.

It is a long and painstaking procedure to find out of what a man is conscious and of what he is not conscious, because the unconscious plays in him all the time.

Certain things are conscious; certain things are unconscious; but you can’t always tell.

You have to ask people, "Now are you conscious of what you say?"

Or, "Did you notice?"

And you discover suddenly that there are quite a number of things that he didn’t know at all.

For instance, certain people have many reasons; everybody can see them. They themselves don’t know it at all.

Dr. Evans: Then this whole ma􀂂er of extremes—introvert and extrovert—you say is a schematic approach, a frame of reference.

Dr. Jung: My whole scheme of typology is merely a sort of orientation.

There is such a factor as introversion; there is such a factor as extroversion.

The classification of individuals 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.

It is very often the case, for instance—I might say it is almost a rule, but I don’t want to make too many rules in order not to be schematic— that an introvert marries an extrovert for compensation, or another type marries a countertype to complement himself.

For example, a man who has made a certain amount of money is a good business man, but he has no education.

His dream is, of course, a grand piano at home and being around artists, painters or singers or God knows what, and intellectual people; and he marries accordingly a wife of that type, in order to have that too.

She has it, and she marries him because he has a lot of money.

These compensations go on all the time.

When you study marriages, you can see it easily.

And, of course, we analysts have to deal a lot with marriages, particularly those that go wrong, because the types are too different sometimes and they don’t understand each other at all.

You see, the main values of the extrovert are anathema to the introvert, and he says, "To hell with the world, I think."

His wife interprets this as his megalomania.

But it is just as if an extrovert said to an introvert, "Now, look here fellow; these here are the facts; this is reality."

And he’s right! And the other says, "But I think, I hold—," and that sounds like nonsense to the extrovert because he doesn’t know that the other one, without knowing it, is beholding an inner world, an inner reality; and that other one may be right, as he may be wrong, even if he found himself upon God knows what solid facts.

Take, for instance, the interpretation of statistics.

You can prove almost anything with statistics.

What is more a fact than a statistic? Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 23.

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

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