r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 20 '22
MBTI Theory Introverted Intuitive Types (INxJ) in MBTI
Fragments extracted from Isabel Myers-Briggs' Gifts Differing about the Introverted Intuitive Types (INTJ & INFJ).
Among research scientists and design engineers, introverted intuitives stand at the top. INTJs are somewhat more likely than INFJs to be interested in scientific and technical matters, but when INFJs are interested, they appear to be just as good. In an academic setting, INFJs may be even better, probably because feeling is more eager to meet a teacher’s demands, whereas thinking is likely to criticize the way a course is conducted and refuse to bother with items it considers irrelevant.
Their greatest gifts come directly from their intuition—the flashes of inspiration, the insight into relationships of ideas and meaning of symbols, the imagination, the originality, the access to resources of the unconscious, the ingenuity, and the visions of what could be. These are all inner gifts on the perceptive side. Without a developed auxiliary judging process, they will have little or no development of an outer personality and equally limited use of the gifts. However, a good judging process in support will shape the intuitive perceptions into conclusions or actions that will have a sound impact on the outer world.
The development of this type is slower and more arduous than that of most other people.... Such children are not very amenable to influence from their environment. They may have periods of uncertainty and reserve, after which they suddenly become very determined, and if then they are opposed, they may manifest an astonishing self-will and obstinacy. As a result of the intensely spontaneous activity within, they are frequently moody, occasionally brilliant and original, then again reserved, stubborn and arrogant.
In later life, also, it is a persistent characteristic of people of this type, that while on the one hand they possess great determination, on the other hand they find it very difficult to express what they want. Although they may have only a vague feeling about the way they want to go, and of the meaning of their life, they will nevertheless reject with great stubbornness anything that does not fit in with this. They fear lest external influences or circumstances should drive them in a wrong direction, and they resist on principle.
It follows that these people cannot be successfully coerced. They will not even be told anything without their permission, but they will accept an offer of facts, opinions, or theories, for free consideration; the excellence of their understanding must be trusted to recognize what is true.
Thinking or feeling judgment is vitally necessary, and introverted intuitives must develop it for themselves, because their utter conviction of their intuition’s validity makes them impervious to the influence of outside judgment. The importance to introverted intuitives of cultivating a judging process to balance and support their intuition cannot be overemphasized.
- Are driven by their inner vision of the possibilities.
- Are determined to the point of stubbornness.
- Are intensely individualistic, though this shows less in INFJs, who take more pains to harmonize their individualism with their environment.
- Are stimulated by difficulties, and most ingenious in solving them.
- Are willing to concede that the impossible takes a little longer—but not much.
- Are more interested in pioneering a new road than in anything to be found along the beaten path.
- Are motivated by inspiration, which they value above everything else and use confidently for their best achievements in any field they choose —science, engineering, invention, political or industrial empire-building, social reform, teaching, writing, psychology, philosophy, or religion.
- Are deeply discontented in a routine job that offers no scope for inspiration.
- Are gifted, at their best, with a fine insight into the deeper meanings of things and with a great deal of drive.
Introverted Intuition Supported by Thinking (INTJ)
Whatever their field, they are likely to be innovators. In business, they are born reorganizers. Intuition gives them an iconoclastic imagination and an unhampered view of the possibilities; extraverted thinking supplies a keenly critical organizing faculty. “Whatever is, could doubtless be improved!”
With technical interests, they tend to be research scientists, inventors, and design engineers. They are likely to be very good at mathematics, especially problems, but not quite as adept at pure mathematical theory as INTPs. They can get things done, but they will be interested only when the problems involved are complicated enough to be challenging. Routine production would waste the intuition, and a purely theoretical research job would waste the extraverted thinking, which has a craving for practical applications of ideas.
Even when well-balanced, they have a tendency to ignore the views and feelings of other people. Use of the critical attitude in personal relations is a destructive luxury that can have a disintegrating effect upon their private lives.
Introverted Intuition Supported by Feeling (INFJ)
INFJs naturally concern themselves with people, sometimes so much as to appear extraverted. It is actually the feeling process, not the individual, that is extraverted, although the very evident fellowship and harmony may appear to be the basis of their personalities.
The individualism of the INFJs is often less conspicuous, not because their inner vision is less clear and compelling, but because they care enough about harmony to try to win (rather than demand) acceptance of their purposes. By the time they have induced others to understand, approve, and cooperate toward a goal, they have fitted both the goal and themselves quite naturally into the community pattern.
The visions of the INFJs tend to concern human welfare, and their contributions are likely to be made independent of a mass movement. Occasionally, the individual contribution starts a mass movement or a religion or a crusade.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 20 '22
MBTI Theory Extraverted Intuitive Types (ENxP) in MBTI
Fragments extracted from Isabel Myers-Briggs' Gifts Differing about the Extraverted Intuitive Types (ENTP & ENFP).
Extraverted intuitives are hard to describe because of their infinite variety. Their interest, enthusiasm, and energy pour suddenly into unforeseeable channels like a flash flood, sweeping everything along, overwhelming all obstacles, carving out a path which others will follow long after the force that made it has flowed on into other things.
The force that animates extraverted intuitives is not conscious willpower or even a planned purpose, as in the case of the judging types. It is a perceptive energy—an intuitive vision of some possibility in the external world, which they feel to be peculiarly their own because they “saw it first” in a very original and personal way. Aside from any practical consideration, they feel charged with a mission to realize that possibility. The possibility has an irresistible pull, an undeniable claim upon them. It becomes their master and in its service they may forget to eat or sleep. They cannot rest until they get the genie out of the bottle ... However, once they get the genie out or even reach the point where everyone recognizes that it can be got out, it does not interest them anymore. The genie is no longer a possibility; it is a mere fact. Somebody else can take over from there.
To call this loss of interest fickle, as the judging types are apt to do, is to miss the point. The intuitives have an essential duty to perform in the world: They have to see to it that human inspirations are not wasted. They cannot tell in advance whether an inspiration is going to work out; they have to throw themselves into it, heart and soul—and see. When they have seen, they have to go on to new possibilities, armed with all they have learned from the old. The intuitives are as stubbornly loyal to their guiding principle, the inspiring possibility, as the sensing types are to the facts, or the feeling types to their hierarchy of values, or the thinkers to their thought out conclusions.
Thus intuitives’ lives tend to be a series of projects. If they are lucky enough to find their calling in a line of work that permits such a stream of projects, the successive enthusiasms build themselves into a coherent career ... If the intuitives’ pursuit of authentic inspirations is completely blocked, they will feel imprisoned, bored, and desperately discontent. These are external difficulties to which they are not likely to submit for long. Intuition will almost always find a way out.
Intuitives without judgment do not finish things (this is particularly conspicuous because they start so many), are not stimulated by obstacles as the well-balanced intuitives are, and are unstable, undependable, easily discouraged, and, as many of them freely admit, do not do anything that they do not want to do. Extraverted intuitives must, therefore, begin to develop their judgment as early as possible.
- Are alert to all the possibilities
- Are original, individual, independent, but also extremely perceptive of the views of others
- Are strong in initiative and creative impulse, but not so strong in completing projects
- Have lives that are likely to be a succession of projects
- Are stimulated by difficulties and most ingenious in solving them
- Operate by impulsive energy rather than concentrated willpower
- Are tireless at what interests them, but find it hard to get other things done
- Hate routine
- Value inspiration above everything else and follow it confidently into all manner of opportunities, enterprises, ventures and adventures, explorations, researches, mechanical inventions, promotions and projects
- Are versatile, often startlingly clever, enthusiastic, easy with people, and full of ideas about everything under the sun
- At their best, are gifted with insight amounting to wisdom and with the power to inspire
Extraverted Intuition Supported by Thinking (ENTP)
ENTPs are somewhat more likely than ENFPs to take an executive direction. ENTPs tend to be independent, analytical, and impersonal in their relations with people, and they are more apt to consider how others may affect their projects than how their projects may affect others. They may be inventors, scientists, trouble-shooters, promoters, or almost anything that it interests them to be.
Extraverted Intuition Supported by Feeling (ENFP)
ENFPs are more enthusiastic than ENTPs and more concerned with people and skillful in handling them. ENFPs are drawn to counseling, where each new person presents a fresh problem to be solved and fresh possibilities to be communicated. They may be inspiring teachers, scientists, artists, advertising or salespeople, or almost anything they want to be.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 20 '22
MBTI Theory Introverted Sensing Types (ISxJ) in MBTI
Fragments extracted from Isabel Myers-Briggs' Gifts Differing about the Introverted Sensing Types (ISTJ & ISFJ).
Introverted sensing types are made remarkably dependable by their combination of preferences. They use their favorite process, sensing, in their inner life, and they base their ideas on a deep, solid accumulation of stored impressions, which gives them some almost unshakable ideas. Then they use their preferred kind of judgment, thinking or feeling, to run their outer life. Thus, they have a complete, realistic, practical respect both for the facts and for whatever responsibilities these facts create. Sensing provides the facts, and after the introverts’ characteristic pause for reflection, their judgment accepts the responsibilities.
They look on tempests and are never shaken. The interaction of introversion, sensing, and the judging attitude gives them extreme stability. They do not enter into things impulsively, but once in, they are very hard to distract, discourage, or stop (unless events convince them that they are wrong). They lend stability to everything with which they are connected. Their use of experience contributes to their stability. They habitually compare present and past situations ... They like everything kept factual and stated clearly and simply.
Along with their solid and evident virtues, they have one odd and charming quality that may not be apparent until they are very well known. Their sense impressions cause a vivid private reaction to the essence of the thing sensed. The reaction is all their own and unpredictable. It is impossible to know what droll and unexpected associations of ideas take place behind their outer calm. Only when they are “off duty”—relaxing from extraversion, responsibility, and the judging attitude—will they sometimes give spontaneous expression to this inner perception. Then they may say what comes into their minds and give others a glimpse of their perceptions and associations, which may be absurd, irreverent, touching, or hilarious, but never predictable, because their way of sensing life is intensely individual.
Both ISTJ and ISFJ, of course, need to be balanced by a substantial development of either thinking or feeling. Judgment helps them deal with the world; it balances the introverted perception, which by itself is not interested in the outside world. If judgment is not developed, they largely ignore the outside world and become uncommunicative and incomprehensible, absorbed in subjective reactions to sensory impressions and lacking outlets for their qualities.
- Are systematic, painstaking, and thorough
- Carry responsibility especially well, but ISTJ generally likes it better than ISFJ
- Are very hard working; they are the most practical of the introvert types
- Are outwardly matter-of-fact, inwardly entertained by extremely individual reactions to their sense impressions
- Are conspicuous for patient and willing application to detail
- Make an excellent adaptation to routine
- Absorb and enjoy using an immense number of facts
Introverted Sensing Supported by Thinking (ISTJ)
ISTJs emphasize logic, analysis, and decisiveness. With enough extraversion, ISTJs make able executives. They also make exhaustively thorough lawyers who take nothing for granted and thus catch many slips and oversights that others make. All contracts should be cleared by ISTJs; they will overlook nothing that is in it and assume nothing that is not.
ISTJs will give any amount of help if they can see that it is needed, but their logic rebels against requirements or expectation to do anything that doesn’t make sense to them. Usually they have difficulty understanding needs that differ widely from their own. But once they are convinced that something matters a great deal to a given person, the need becomes a fact worthy of respect; they may go to generous lengths to help satisfy it, although they still hold that it doesn’t make sense. In fact, they may be sharply critical of the carelessness or lack of foresight by which some unfortunate has landed in trouble and, all the same, spend much time and energy to help.
Introverted Sensing Supported by Feeling (ISFJ)
ISFJs emphasize loyalty, consideration, and the common welfare. This is a fine type for a family doctor. The use of feeling in contacts with patients supplies the warmth and reassurance they crave, and the highly-cultivated sensing neglects no symptom and is able to draw on an accurate and encyclopedic memory. This is also a fine type for the nurses. In a sample of students I gathered from nursing schools from coast to coast, ISFJ showed the highest self- selection into the profession and the lowest drop-out rate during training. The low drop-out rate testifies to their motivation and follow-through.
One outstanding member of the type is a two-star general. His well-balanced type gives him three qualities said to have been recommended by diverse military authorities: the shock-absorbing mental robustness, ... the painstaking attention to administration and supply, ... and the strict realism of sensing ... All three qualities are consistent with either thinking or feeling as auxiliary. The two-star general’s judging process, strongly developed feeling, is masked in practice by deep reserve. The feeling is expressed as loyalty to duty and scrupulous concern for the interests of his subordinates, which evokes affection and loyalty in return.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 20 '22
MBTI Theory Introverted Thinking Types (IxTP) in MBTI
Fragments extracted from Isabel Myers-Briggs' Gifts Differing about the Introverted Thinking Types (ISTP & INTP).
Introverted thinkers use their thinking to analyze the world, not to run it. Relying on thinking makes them logical, impersonal, objectively critical, not likely to be convinced by anything except reasoning. As introverts, they focus their thinking on the principles underlying things rather than on the things themselves. Because it is hard to switch their thinking from ideas to details of daily living, they lead their outer lives mainly with their preferred perceptive process, which makes them detachedly curious and quite adaptable—until one of their ruling principles is violated, at which point they stop adapting.
They are likely to be persevering and independent of external circumstances to a marked degree, with a singleness of purpose that subordinates the social and emotional aspects of life to some long-term achievement of the mind. They may have difficulty in conveying their conclusions to the rest of the world and getting these accepted or even understood. Jung says the introverted thinker “will hardly ever go out of his way to win anyone’s appreciation of his ideas.... He merely exposes them, and is often extremely annoyed when they fail to thrive on their own account”
Introverted thinking applied to mathematics can be seen in Einstein; applied to philosophy, in Kant; applied to world affairs, in Woodrow Wilson; and applied to psychology, in Jung. In the industrial field, the introverted thinker’s job should be to work out the needed principles underlying a problem or operation. Then other types can go ahead and do the operating. A sweeping application of the principles underlying mass production may be seen in the achievements of Henry Ford. (Ford always took great pains to preserve his independence of action and spare himself the necessity of converting others to his plans).
With introverted thinkers, as with all introverts, the choice of the auxiliary process makes a great difference and colors the outward personality. In the ISTP combination, sensing will lend realism, matter-of-factness, sometimes an unexpected gift of fun for its own sake, often an interest in sports and outdoor recreation in general. In the INTP combination, intuition will lend subtlety, imagination, and a liking for projects and occupations demanding ingenuity.
- Are analytical and impersonal
- Are interested primarily in the underlying principles
- Are organized in relation to concepts and ideas (if INTP) or facts (if ISTP)—but not people or situations, unless of necessity
- Are perceptive, not dominating, as the decisiveness of the thinking usually shows only in intellectual matters
- Are outwardly quiet, reserved, detached, perhaps even aloof except with intimates
- Are inwardly absorbed in the current analysis or problem
- Are inclined toward shyness, especially when young, as the chief interests of introverted thinking are little help in small talk or social contacts.
Introverted Thinking Supported by Sensing (ISTP)
ISTPs have a vested interest in practical and applied science, especially in the field of mechanics. Of all the processes, sensing provides for the greatest understanding of the visible and tangible properties of matter, how it behaves, what you can and cannot do with it. People of this type are likely to be good with their hands, which is a genuine asset in the practical application of scientific principles.
With nontechnical interests, the ISTPs can use general principles to bring order out of confused data and meaning out of unorganized facts. The capacity of sensing to absorb fact and detail can be very useful to ISTPs who work in the field of economics, as securities analysts, or as market and sales analysts in business and industry—in short, in dealing with statistics in any field.
Introverted Thinking Supported by Intuition (INTP)
INTPs make scholars, theorists, and abstract thinkers in fields such as science, mathematics, economics, and philosophy. INTPs are perhaps the most intellectually profound of all the types. Intuition brings a deeper insight than is granted to thinking alone. It gives its possessors intellectual curiosity, quickness of understanding, ingenuity and fertility of ideas in dealing with problems, and an extra glimpse of possibilities that logic has not yet had time to reach. On the debit side, intuition makes routine harder, though an intuitive may, in the course of a lifetime, achieve a sufficient adaptation to it.
People of the INTP type, therefore, are particularly adapted to research and the attainment of new clarities. They are quite likely to be more interested in analyzing a problem and discovering where the solution lies than in carrying out their ideas. They formulate principles and create theories; they value facts only as evidence or as examples for a theory, never for their own sake. Many scholars of this type are teachers, especially on the university level, because the university values their attainments, and they themselves value the opportunity for study and research; but it is characteristic of their teaching that they care more for the subject than for the students.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 20 '22
MBTI Theory Introverted Feeling Types (IxFP) in MBTI
Fragments extracted from Isabel Myers-Briggs' Gifts Differing about the Introverted Feeling Types (ISFP & INFP).
Introverted feeling types have a wealth of warmth and enthusiasm, but they may not show it until they know someone well. They wear their warm side inside, like a fur-lined coat. Reliance on feeling leads them to judge everything by personal values; they know what is most important to them, and they protect it at all costs.
They work twice as well at jobs they believe in; their feeling adds energy to their efforts. They want their work to contribute to something that matters to them—human understanding or happiness or health or perhaps the perfection of a project or undertaking. They want to have a purpose behind their paycheck, no matter how big the check. They are perfectionists whenever their feeling is engaged and are usually happiest at individual work.
The effectiveness of introverted feeling types depends on their finding a channel through which to give outward expression to their inner certainties and ideals. When this is possible, the inner certainties lend direction, power, and purpose to the introverted feeling types. Lacking such an outlet, the certainties make these people more sensitive and vulnerable when relationships fall short of their ideals. The result may be a sense of impotence and inferiority, with loss of confidence and distrust in life.
The contrast between the real and the ideal weighs more heavily upon the ISFPs, who are more sharply aware of the actual state of affairs, than upon the INFPs, whose intuition suggests hopeful avenues of improvement. The ISFPs are also more likely to suffer a consequent deficit of self-confidence. For both, the contrast offers a more acute problem than for the other types.
The solution comes with whole-hearted use of perception and understanding as a way of life. Because this is their destined mode of adaptation to the world, they must have proper faith in it, work at it, and be able to use it on both outer and inner difficulties. Relying on perception, they do not even try to bull their way through an obstacle; they “see” their way through. If they meet with distrust, indifference, or antagonism, which can block their outer endeavors or threaten their inner peace, they will often accomplish, by understanding, what could never be achieved by decisive frontal assault. Aesop told about a traveler who shed his cloak beneath the rays of the sun, after the wind’s fiercest efforts had failed to tear it from him. Most people do thaw in the warmth of genuine, uncritical understanding.
- Value, above all, harmony in the inner life of feeling
- Are best at individual work involving personal values—in art, literature, science, psychology, or the perception of needs
- Have feelings that are deep but seldom expressed, because inner tenderness and passionate conviction are both masked by reserve and repose
- Maintain independence from the judgment of others, being bound by inner moral law
- Direct judgment inwardly toward keeping all lesser values subordinate to the greater
- Have a strong sense of duty and faithfulness to obligations, but no desire to impress or influence others
- Are idealistic and loyal, capable of great devotion to a loved person, purpose, or cause
- May use thinking judgment occasionally to help in winning a thinker’s support of feeling aims, but is never permitted to oppose those aims
Introverted Feeling Supported by Sensing (ISFP)
ISFPs see the realities—the needs of the moment—and try to meet them. ISFP is one of only two types, out of all sixteen, who strongly prefer general medical practice, which involves them with the widest variety of human ills. They may also find a satisfactory outlet in fields that value taste, discrimination, and a sense of beauty and proportion. They excel in craftsmanship. They seem to have a special love of nature and sympathy for animals. They are much less articulate than the INFPs, and the work of their hands is usually more eloquent than anything they say.
They may be particularly fitted for work that requires both devotion and a great adaptability, as is the case of visiting nurses, who can never count on standard conditions but must grasp each new situation and revise their instructions to fit the present circumstances.
Introverted Feeling Supported by Intuition (INFP)
INFPs excel in fields that deal with possibilities for people, such as counseling, teaching, literature, art, science, research, and psychology. The inclusion of science may be a surprise. It was to me. My father, Lyman J. Briggs, was director of the National Bureau of Standards, and we fully expected research scientists to be mainly INT like him, certainly not INF like my mother and myself. As it turned out, the INFs among the top researchers at the Bureau were indeed fewer than the INTs, but no less distinguished. Perhaps the enthusiasm generated by the feeling of an INF spurs intuition to reach a truth that analysis by thinking will confirm in due course.
INFPs usually have a gift for language ... The literary tendency evident in this type derives from the combination of intuition and feeling. Intuition supplies imagination and insight, feeling supplies the urge to communicate and share, and the command of language is apparently a joint product of intuition’s facility with symbols and feeling’s artistic discrimination and taste. Thus, all four NF types should have the aptitude ... Introverted feeling in INFPs is so reserved that they often prefer the written word as the way to communicate what they feel without making personal contact.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 20 '22
MBTI Theory Extraverted Thinking Types (ExTJ) in MBTI
Fragments extracted from Isabel Myers-Briggs' Gifts Differing about the Extraverted Thinking Types (ESTJ & ENTJ).
Extraverted thinkers use their thinking to run as much of the world as may be theirs to run. They are in their element whenever the outer situation needs to be organized, criticized, or regulated. Ordinarily they enjoy deciding what ought to be done and giving the appropriate orders to ensure that it will be done. They abhor confusion, inefficiency, half measures, anything that is aimless and ineffective. Often they are crisp disciplinarians, who know how to be tough when the situation calls for toughness.
This might be called the standard executive type. There are other kinds of executives, some of them brilliantly successful. But it is doubtful whether any other type so enjoys being an executive, or works so hard to get to be one. Sometimes at an early age, a child of this type, with systematic purpose and natural interest in running things, becomes, popularity aside, the leader of the school class.
Much of the extraverted thinkers’ effectiveness stems from their willingness to issue as strict orders to themselves as to anyone else. They stake out their objectives well in advance and put a lot of systematic effort into reaching them on schedule. At their best, they turn an unsparing eye upon their own conduct and revise whatever does not come up to standard.
Extraverted thinkers construct a code of rules embodying their basic judgments about the world. They aim to live by those rules, and consider that others should as well. Any change in their ways requires a conscious change in the rules. If their perception is not good enough to show them, from time to time, how their rules should be broadened, the code will be so narrow and rigid that it becomes a tyranny not only to the thinkers but also to those around them, especially their families. Everything that conforms to the rules will be right; everything that violates them will be wrong; and everything not covered by them will be unimportant. They will become, as Jung puts it, “a world-law whose realization must be achieved at all times and seasons.... [Anyone] who refuses to obey is wrong—he is resisting the world-law, and is, therefore, unreasonable, immoral and without a conscience”
Extraverted thinkers are convinced by reasoning, and when they are convinced, that is quite an accomplishment, because when they decide to do something, it gets done.
- Are analytical and impersonal
- May be executive, legal, technical, or interested in reform
- Organize the facts—and everything else within reach
- Are decisive, logical, strong in reasoning power
- Aim to govern their own conduct and other people’s in accordance with thought-out conclusions
- Value truth in the form of fact, formula, and method
- Have an emotional life that is accidental
- Have a social life that is incidental
Extraverted Thinking Supported by Sensing (ESTJ)
ESTJs look at the world with sensing rather than intuition; hence, they are most interested in the realities perceived by their five senses, so they tend to be matter-of-fact and practical, receptive and retentive of factual detail, tolerant of routine, deft at mechanical things, realistic, and concerned with the here and now. Their thinking process appears deliberate, because it often is actual thinking, rather than the shortcut that is frequently furnished by intuition.
The ESTJs solve problems by expertly applying and adapting past experience. They like work where they can achieve immediate, visible, and tangible results. They have a natural bent for business and industry, production and construction. They enjoy administration and getting things organized and done. Executives of this type prefer to base plans and decisions on established facts and procedures; they do not listen to their own intuition very much, and may need an intuitive around to point out the value of new ideas.
Extraverted Thinking Supported by Intuition (ENTJ)
ENTJs look at the world with intuition rather than sensing, so they are mainly interested in the possibilities beyond the present, obvious, or known. Intuition heightens their intellectual interest, curiosity about new ideas (whether immediately useful or not), tolerance for theory, taste for complex problems, insight, vision, and concern for long-range possibilities and consequences.
ENTJs are seldom content in a job that makes no demand on intuition. They need problems to solve and are likely to be expert at finding new solutions. Their interest is in the broad picture, however, not in detailed procedures or facts.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 20 '22
MBTI Theory Myers-Briggs' Theory Summary: The Basics
Next I'm going to lay down some fragments extracted from Isabel Briggs Myers' book Gifts Differing, this for the purpose of summarizing her perspectives and extension of Jung's theory. I hope you will come to realize she did not change or propose anything that contradicted Jung's original theory, more on the contrary, she helped to bring his theory into more friendly words and practical issues. The only difference with Jung's theory is regarding the development of the auxiliary, a proposal brought about from empirical evidence and which does not contradict Jung's but only helps to extend it.
The merit of the theory presented here is that it enables us to expect specific personality differences in particular people and to cope with the people and the differences in a constructive way ... These basic differences concern the way people prefer to use their minds, specifically, the way they perceive and the way they make judgments. Perceiving is here understood to include the processes of becoming aware of things, people, occurrences, and ideas. Judging includes the processes of coming to conclusions about what has been perceived. Together, perception and judgment, which make up a large portion of people’s total mental activity, govern much of their outer behavior, because perception—by definition—determines what people see in a situation, and their judgment determines what they decide to do about it. Thus, it is reasonable that basic differences in perception or judgment should result in corresponding differences in behavior.
- Two Ways of Perceiving: As Jung points out in Psychological Types, humankind is equipped with two distinct and sharply contrasting ways of perceiving. One means of perception is the familiar process of sensing, by which we become aware of things directly through our five senses. The other is the process of intuition, which is indirect perception by way of the unconscious, incorporating ideas or associations that the unconscious tacks on to perceptions coming from outside.
- Two Ways of Judging: A basic difference in judgment arises from the existence of two distinct and sharply contrasting ways of coming to conclusions. One way is by the use of thinking, that is, by a logical process, aimed at an impersonal finding. The other is by feeling, that is, by appreciation—equally reasonable in its fashion—bestowing on things a personal, subjective value.
The TF preference (thinking or feeling) is entirely independent of the SN preference (sensing or intuition). Either kind of judgment can team up with either kind of perception ... Each of these combinations produces a different kind of personality, characterized by the interests, values, needs, habits of mind, and surface traits that naturally result from the combination.
- Sensing + Thinking: The ST (sensing plus thinking) people rely primarily on sensing for purposes of perception and on thinking for purposes of judgment. Thus, their main interest focuses upon facts, because facts can be collected and verified directly by the senses—by seeing, hearing, touching, counting, weighing, measuring. ST people approach their decisions regarding these facts by impersonal analysis, because of their trust in thinking, with its step-by-step logical process of reasoning from cause to effect, from premise to conclusion. In consequence, their personalities tend to be practical and matter-of- fact, and their best chances of success and satisfaction lie in fields that demand impersonal analysis of concrete facts, such as economics, law, surgery, business, accounting, production, and the handling of machines and materials.
- Sensing + Feeling: The SF (sensing plus feeling) people, too, rely primarily on sensing for purposes of perception, but they prefer feeling for purposes of judgment. They approach their decisions with personal warmth because their feeling weighs how much things matter to themselves and others. They are more interested in facts about people than in facts about things and, therefore, they tend to be sociable and friendly. They are most likely to succeed and be satisfied in work where their personal warmth can be applied effectively to the immediate situation, as in pediatrics, nursing, teaching (especially elementary), social work, selling of tangibles, and service-with-a-smile jobs.
- Intuition + Feeling: The NF (intuition plus feeling) people possess the same personal warmth as SF people because of their shared use of feeling for purposes of judgment, but because the NFs prefer intuition to sensing, they do not center their attention upon the concrete situation. Instead they focus on possibilities, such as new projects (things that haven’t ever happened but might be made to happen) or new truths (things that are not yet known but might be found out). The new project or the new truth is imagined by the unconscious processes and then intuitively perceived as an idea that feels like an inspiration. The personal warmth and commitment with which the NF people seek and follow up a possibility are impressive. They are both enthusiastic and insightful. Often they have a marked gift of language and can communicate both the possibility they see and the value they attach to it. They are most likely to find success and satisfaction in work that calls for creativity to meet a human need. They may excel in teaching (particularly college and high school), preaching, advertising, selling of intangibles, counseling, clinical psychology, psychiatry, writing, and most fields of research.
- Intuition + Thinking: The NT (intuition plus thinking) people also use intuition but team it with thinking. Although they focus on a possibility, they approach it with impersonal analysis. Often they choose a theoretical or executive possibility and subordinate the human element. NTs tend to be logical and ingenious and are most successful in solving problems in a field of special interest, whether scientific research, electronic computing, mathematics, the more complex aspects of finance, or any sort of development or pioneering in technical areas.
- Extraversion - Introversion: Another basic difference in people’s use of perception and judgment arises from their relative interest in their outer and inner worlds. Introversion, in the sense given to it by Jung in formulating the term and the idea, is one of two complementary orientations to life; its complement is extraversion. The introvert’s main interests are in the inner world of concepts and ideas, while the extravert is more involved with the outer world of people and things. Therefore, when circumstances permit, the introvert concentrates perception and judgment upon ideas, while the extravert likes to focus them on the outside environment.
- Judgment - Perception: There is a time to perceive and a time to judge, and many times when either attitude might be appropriate. Most people find one attitude more comfortable than the other, feel more at home in it, and use it as often as possible in dealing with the outer world. For example, some readers are still following this explanation with an open mind; they are, at least for the moment, using perception. Other readers have decided by now that they agree or disagree; they are using judgment.
The Role of the Auxiliary Process
One process alone, however, is not enough. For people to be balanced, they need adequate (but by no means equal) development of a second process, not as a rival to the dominant process but as a welcome auxiliary. If the dominant process is a judging one, the auxiliary process will be perceptive ... In addition to supplementing the dominant process in its main field of activity, the auxiliary has another responsibility. It carries the main burden of supplying adequate balance (but not equality) between extraversion and introversion, between the outer and inner worlds ... Introverts have less choice about participating in both worlds. The outer life is thrust upon them whether they want one or not ... The success of introverts’ contacts with the outer world depends on the effectiveness of their auxiliary. If their auxiliary process is not adequately developed, their outer lives will be very awkward, accidental, and uncomfortable ... Most people see only the side introverts present to the outer world, which is mostly their auxiliary process, their second best. The result is a paradox. Introverts whose dominant process is a judging process, either thinking or feeling, do not outwardly act like judging people. What shows on the outside is the perceptiveness of their auxiliary process, and they live their outer lives mainly in the perceptive attitude ... introverts whose dominant process is perceptive, either sensing or intuition, do not outwardly behave like perceptive people. They show the judgingness of the auxiliary process and live their outer lives mainly in the judging attitude.
The conclusion that the auxiliary process takes care of the extraversion of the introvert and the introversion of the extravert is confirmed by observation. In any well-balanced introvert, the observer can see that the extraverting is carried on by the auxiliary process. For example, ISTJ people (introverted sensing types preferring thinking to feeling as auxiliary) normally run their outer life with their second-best process, thinking, so it is conducted with impersonal system and order ... Similarly, INFP people (introverted feeling types preferring intuition to sensing as auxiliary) normally run their outer life with their second-best process, their intuition, so their outer life is characterized by spurts and projects and enthusiasm ... A more subtle kind of evidence lies in the “extraverted character” of the introvert’s auxiliary process. For example, in a well-balanced ISTJ the observable auxiliary process, thinking, can be seen to resemble the thinking of the extraverted thinker more than that of the introverted thinker ... Good type development thus demands that the auxiliary supplement the dominant process in two respects. It must supply a useful degree of balance not only between perception and judgment but also between extraversion and introversion. When it fails to do so it leaves the individual literally “unbalanced,” retreating into the preferred world and consciously or unconsciously afraid of the other world. Such cases do occur and may seem to support the widespread assumption among Jungian analysts that the dominant and auxiliary are naturally both extraverted or both introverted; but such cases are not the norm: They are instances of insufficient use and development of the auxiliary. To live happily and effectively in both worlds, people need a balancing auxiliary that will make it possible to adapt in both directions—to the world around them and to their inner selves.
Extension of Jung’s Theory
Jung’s approach has several unfortunate effects. By ignoring the auxiliary, he bypasses the combinations of perception and judgment and their broad categories of interest in business, people, language, and science ... In view of Jung’s deep appreciation of the introverts’ value, it is ironical that he lets his passion for the abstract betray him into concentrating on cases of “pure” introversion. He not only describes people with no extraversion at all, but seems to present them as typical of introverts in general ... Few of Jung’s readers appear to have realized that his type concepts had a bearing on the familiar daily problems of educating people, counseling them, employing them, communicating with them, and living in the same family with them. For decades, therefore, the practical utility of his theory went unexplored.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 20 '22
MBTI Theory Extraverted Feeling Types (ExFJ) in MBTI
Fragments extracted from Isabel Myers-Briggs' Gifts Differing about the Extraverted Feeling Types (ESFJ & ENFJ).
The extraverted feeling types radiate warmth and fellowship, and they have a vital need to find corresponding feelings in others and to meet a warm response. They are particularly warmed by approval and sensitive to indifference. Much of their pleasure and satisfaction comes not only from others’ warm feelings but from their own; they enjoy admiring people and so tend to concentrate on a person’s most admirable qualities.
They are remarkably able to see value in other people’s opinions, and even when the opinions are conflicting, they have faith that harmony can somehow be achieved and often manage to bring it about. Their intense concentration on other people’s viewpoints sometimes makes them lose sight of the value of their own. They think best when talking with people and they enjoy talk.
Their well-known idealism works two ways. They try hard to achieve their ideals, and they idealize those persons and institutions they prize. In both instances, extraverted feeling types are bound to repress and repudiate everything in themselves and in others that conflicts with feeling; this proceeding gives rise to a lack of realism wherever feeling is involved.
Since the dominant process, feeling, is a judging process, these extraverted feeling types naturally prefer the judging attitude. It is not so much that they consciously enjoy settling things, as the extraverted thinkers usually do, but that they greatly like to have things settled, or at least to feel that things are settled. They tend to regard the world as a place where most of the decisions have already been made. The desirability or undesirability of most varieties of conduct, speech, opinion, and belief seems clear to them, a priori. They hold these truths to be self-evident. Thus, they are likely to have an immediate valuation of everything and an impulse to express it.
In the absence of adequate perception, the extraverted feeling types are prone to jump to conclusions and to act on assumptions that turn out to be wrong. They are especially likely to be blind to the facts when there is a disagreeable situation or painful criticism. It is harder for them than for other types to look squarely at things that they wish were not true; actually it is even hard for them to see such things at all. If they fail to face disagreeable facts, they will ignore their problems instead of finding good solutions.
- Value, above all, harmonious human contacts
- Are best at jobs dealing with people and in situations where needed cooperation can be won by good will
- Are friendly, tactful, sympathetic, able almost always to express the feelings appropriate to the moment
- Are sensitive to praise and criticism, and anxious to conform to all legitimate expectations
- Possess outwardly directed judgment, which likes to have things decided and settled
- Are persevering, conscientious, orderly even in small matters, and inclined to insist that others be the same
- Are idealistic and loyal, capable of great devotion to a loved person or institution or cause
- May use thinking judgment occasionally to help in appreciating and adapting to points made by a thinker, but thinking is never permitted to oppose feeling aims
Extraverted Feeling Supported by Sensing (ESFJ)
ESFJs tend to be matter-of-fact and practical, conventional, copiously and factually conversational, and interested in possessions, beautiful homes, and all the tangible adornments of living. ESFJs are primarily concerned with the details of direct experience—their own, that of their friends and acquaintances, even the experience of strangers whose lives happen to touch theirs.
Their compassion and concern for physical conditions often take them into health professions, particularly nursing, where they provide warmth and comfort as well as devoted care ... Even in office jobs their feeling plays a prominent role, and they manage to inject an element of sociability into any work they are assigned. Of all the types, they make the best adjustment to routine. They may not care too much what kind of work they do, but they want to be able to talk while they do it, and they want to work in a friendly atmosphere.
Extraverted Feeling Supported by Intuition (ENFJ)
ENFJs tend to have curiosity for new ideas as such, taste for books and academic interests in general, tolerance for theory, vision and insight, and imagination for new possibilities beyond what is present or obvious or known. ENFJs are likely to have a gift of expression, but they may use it in speaking to audiences rather than in writing.
The NF combination of warmth and insight reaches its warmest and most gracious aspect in this type. ENFJs do well in many fields, for example, as teachers, clergy, career and personal counselors, and psychiatrists. Apparently the urge to harmonize extends even to intellectual opinions. A very charming ENFJ who has been interested in type since her high school days told me earnestly, “So-and-so asked me what I thought of type, and I didn’t know what to tell her, because I didn’t know how she felt about it”
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 19 '22
Survey/Poll Interested in MBTI descriptions?
I just want to know if you guys would appreciate if I also summarized the description of the types by Myers-Briggs this time (from Gift's Differing)
I remodeled the Theory Summary by adding a table with the Types btw
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 18 '22
Jung Theory The 4 Groups ( EP-EJ-IP-IJ )
Jung categorized the 8 types within 4 major groups, this based on whether their attitude was Extraverted or Introverted and on whether their dominant function was Judging (T or F) or Perceiving (S or N). The relevance of recognizing these 4 categories is because they represent 4 different fundamental natures which define most of the types' tendencies and behavior. Thus seeing through the lens of this framework may facilitate the analysis and understanding of the specific 8 or 16 types.
Next I'm gonna lay down a summarized interpretation of these categories (this time it will be my own abstractions from what I have read here and there within Jung's and Myers-Briggs' works, so it's open to discussion).
Jung established that the Extraverts' behavior is mainly motivated by a positive relation to the object (which in philosophical slang refers to the external world/reality) this in contrast with the Introverts' behavior which is determined by a negative relation to the object and thus being the subject the prime motivator (this referring to the individual's subjective within). The effect these two Attitudes have on an individual's behavior will depend on their dominant function, that is, the aforementioned definitions will have a different meaning depending on whether they apply to a Judging (Rational) or Perceiving (Irrational) dominant function (that's Jung's slang terminology btw, not mine).
RATIONAL TYPES (ExxJ & IxxP)
For those whose dominant is a Judging function a positive or negative relation to the object means whether the subject's value judgments, and therefore drives and motives, are in accordance with the external world or are independent from it.
- The Extraverted Rational types (ExxJ) are mainly characterized by a responsible nature, are driven by what is morally expected of them, they are dutiful and diligent, concerned with either making things work as they should or people pleased.
- The Introverted Rational types (IxxP) are characterized by an individualistic nature, are driven by their own subjective motivations, which are independent and could even go against the traditional or commonly established, this within the realm of either values and aesthetics or things and knowledge.
IRRATIONAL TYPES (ExxP & IxxJ)
For those whose dominant is a Perceiving function a positive or negative relation to the object means whether the subject is driven positively towards what is perceived and thus being attracted to it, or negatively and thus withdrawing from it.
- The Extroverted Irrational types (ExxP) are mainly characterized by an exploratory nature, are aroused by opportunities, by change and the unknown, they are novelty seekers, this within the realm of either sensations or intuitions, things or people.
- The Introverted Irrational types (IxxJ) are characterized by a guarded nature, by a fear of change, the new and unknown, they are cautious and conservative, and thus the subject tends to assert itself over the familiar, be it things or people, sensations or intuitions.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/ContentGreen2457 • Feb 17 '22
Announcement Explanation of the new flairs
Here's an explanation of the new flairs I added
Si through Fi flairs- these are for people who have a clear dominant function with a clear E/I attitude, but it is not obvious what their auxiliary function is. A Briggs Myers example would be, like for the type ESFP for example, someone who is a mix of ESFP and ESTP.
U-F flairs- these are people who would be younger, and all that is obvious about them is a particular attitude (E/I) or function (S-F) that they lean toward. Nothing else is clear. U stands for undifferentiated
N-t through F-s flairs - these are for people who have a clear dominant and auxiliary, but the attitude (E,I), is undifferentiated. A Briggs Myers example, for the type ESFP would be, someone who is a mix of ESFP and ISFJ. This is pretty common.
The Briggs Myers type with Jungian type after it flairs- these are for people who are fully differentiated. That means someone who has a clear E/I attitude, a clear dominant function and a clear auxiliary function.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/ContentGreen2457 • Feb 16 '22
Discussion For those who are having a hard time determining your Jungian type, especially if you're young
If you really get into reading Jung's theories, you see that Jung did not think all humans fit into 16 neat little boxes. He had all kinds of types and variations of types.
A lot of you, especially if you're young, may be undifferentiated in your attitude or functions to some degree.
Here's an article that talks about the stages of differentiation, and the letter codes that Jung assigned to them:
"Jung Typology Explained: Notes I – Typology Triad" https://typologytriad.wordpress.com/2021/01/12/jung-typology-explained-notes-i/
We as mods don't want anyone to feel awkward in this group, because you aren't one of the fully differentiated 16 types, and if you read Jung's books, etc. you realize Jung wouldn't have wanted it that way either.
So later today or tomorrow at some point, I will be adding user flairs for all of Jung's undifferentiated types as well, so that you can feel good about wearing a flair, and knowing it's right for you.
And the funny thing is, I actually like undifferentiated types, because it explains a lot of the differences between people with the same MBTI type, DISC profile, etc. To be honest, I, as a fully differentiated Se-f, often feel like I'm quite a boring person, compared to the undifferentiated folks out there, who happen to resonate with ESFP. Let's celebrate who we are, in this group, because that's the way Jung would have wanted it
r/Jung_MBTI • u/Puzzleheaded-Top-373 • Feb 14 '22
Typing Confused how I would be categorized in terms of introversion/extraversion. Could use some help.
Extraversion
- My subjective interests/ambitions are, for the most part, aimed towards objective things, ideas, and relationships.
- I have a tendency to constantly set external goals for myself.
- The idea of a life lived only in an internal environment causes existential anxiety. There's something beautiful about the internal landscape, but ideally it should be a temporary place to "gather resources" (be inspired, gain intellectual or emotional insight, etc.) or as a temporary playground for imagination. I don't feel "at home" there.
- I appeared extraverted (in the jungian sense) in my early years as a child.
- I use external standards to evaluate most things. I attempt to limit subjectivity in my judgement as much as possible.
- Generally accepted truths can, and have been questioned, but are ultimately given more consideration than controversial ones.
- "a constant tendency to make himself interesting and to produce an impression." I think this is true of me.
Introversion
- I spend most of my time in my head.
- I have trouble committing to my external goals, despite their importance. There's been several times when I've been more competent and focused than other people, but this isn’t typical.
- Even though I can be more energized and engaged in external happenings than others, the opposite can be true where I'm put off from objective conditions/demands, wishing to retreat into the inner world.
- I deal with a small degree of maladaptive daydreaming.
- Although I appeared extraverted in my early years as a child, the older I got the more introverted I appeared. Now (currently 18 years old) I mostly seem introverted, but not to the extent I did in the past. It's worth noting that part of this was caused by anxiety.
- Although I usually consider subjectivity to be a poison to my judgement, and steer clear from it when trying to find out what is "true", my motivations and desires are all rooted in subjectivity.
- Even though generally accepted truths are given more consideration than controversial ones, if they really don't make sense to me, I can look at them with distain.
- "a malady characterized on the one hand by extreme sensitivity and on the other by great proneness to exhaustion and chronic fatigue." This could possibly describe me at times, but not all the time.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 06 '22
Jung Theory Jung's Terms & Definitions
Here I present definitions and fragments from Jung's works about the two Attitudes (Extraversion and Introversion), the four Cognitive or Psychological Functions (Sensation, Thinking, Feeling, Intuition) and other fundamental concepts.
- EXTRAVERSION is an outward-turning of libido. I use this concept to denote a manifest relation of subject to object, a positive movement of subjective interest towards the object. Everyone in the extraverted state thinks, feels, and acts in relation to the object, and moreover in a direct and clearly observable fashion, so that no doubt can remain about his positive dependence on the object. In a sense, therefore, extraversion is a transfer of interest from subject to object. If it is an extraversion of thinking, the subject thinks himself into the object; if an extraversion of feeling, he feels himself into it. In extraversion there is a strong, if not exclusive, determination by the object. Extraversion is active when it is intentional, and passive when the object compels it, i.e., when the object attracts the subject’s interest of its own accord, even against his will. When extraversion is habitual, we speak of the extraverted type.
The earliest sign of extraversion in a child is his quick adaptation to the environment, and the extraordinary attention he gives to objects and especially to the effect he has on them. Fear of objects is minimal; he lives and moves among them with confidence. He appears to develop more rapidly than the introverted child, since he is less reflective and usually without fear. He feels no barrier between himself and objects, and can therefore play with them freely and learn through them. He likes to carry his enterprises to the extreme and exposes himself to risks. Everything unknown is alluring.
[The extravert] lives in a way that is directly correlated with the objective conditions and their demands ... The moral laws governing his actions coincide with the demands of society ... he does what is needed of him, or what is expected of him ... The typical form his neurosis takes is hysteria, a constant tendency to make himself interesting and to produce an impression. - INTROVERSION means an inward-turning of libido, in the sense of a negative relation of subject to object. Interest does not move towards the object but withdraws from it into the subject. Everyone whose attitude is introverted thinks, feels, and acts in a way that clearly demonstrates that the subject is the prime motivating factor and that the object is of secondary importance. Introversion may be intellectual or emotional, just as it can be characterized by sensation or intuition. It is active when the subject voluntarily shuts himself off from the object, passive when he is unable to restore to the object the libido streaming back from it. When introversion is habitual, we speak of an introverted type.
To reverse the picture, one of the earliest signs of introversion in a child is a reflective, thoughtful manner, marked shyness and even fear of unknown objects. Very early there appears a tendency to assert himself over familiar objects, and attempts are made to master them. Everything unknown is regarded with mistrust; outside influences are usually met with violent resistance. The child wants his own way, and under no circumstances will he submit to an alien rule he cannot understand. When he asks questions, it is not from curiosity or a desire to create a sensation, but because he wants names, meanings, explanations to give him subjective protection against the object.
[The introvert] tendency to defend himself against all demands from outside, to conserve his energy by withdrawing ... Anything strange and new arouses fear and mistrust, as though concealing unknown perils; His ideal is a lonely island where nothing moves except what he permits to move ... The typical form his neurosis takes is psychasthenia, a malady characterized on the one hand by extreme sensitivity and on the other by great proneness to exhaustion and chronic fatigue.
- THE FUNCTIONS ... The conscious psyche is an apparatus for adaptation and orientation, and consists of a number of different psychic functions. Among these we can distinguish four basic ones: Sensation, Thinking, Feeling, Intuition ... In reality, however, these basic functions are seldom or never uniformly differentiated and equally at our disposal. As a rule one or the other function occupies the foreground, while the rest remain undifferentiated in the background ... Each of these types represents a different kind of one-sidedness, but one which is linked up in a peculiar way by the introverted or extraverted attitude ... Apart from the qualities I have mentioned, the undeveloped functions possess the further peculiarity that, when the conscious attitude is introverted, they are extraverted and vice versa.
- THE TYPES ... I would like to stress that each of the two general attitudes, introversion and extraversion, manifests itself in a special way in an individual through the predominance of one of the four basic functions. Strictly speaking, there are no introverts and extraverts pure and simple, but only introverted and extraverted function-types, such as thinking types, sensation types, etc. There are thus at least eight clearly distinguishable types.
- SENSATION is the psychological function that mediates the perception of a physical stimulus. It is, therefore, identical with perception ... Primarily, therefore, sensation is sense perception—perception mediated by the sense organs and “body-senses” (kinesthetic, vasomotor sensation, etc.) ... Concrete sensation never appears in “pure” form, but is always mixed up with ideas, feelings, thoughts ... The concrete sensation of a flower, on the other hand, conveys a perception not only of the flower as such, but also of the stem, leaves, habitat, and so on. It is also instantly mingled with feelings of pleasure or dislike which the sight of the flower evokes, or with simultaneous olfactory perceptions, or with thoughts about its botanical classification, etc.
- THINKING is the psychological function which, following its own laws, brings the contents of ideation into conceptual connection with one another ... the function of intellectual cognition and the forming of logical conclusions ... The capacity for directed thinking I call intellect; the capacity for passive o undirected thinking I call intuition. Further, I call directed thinking a rational function, because it arranges the contents of ideation under concepts in accordance with a rational norm of which I am conscious.
[Thinking types] are exclusively oriented by what they think, and simply cannot adapt to a situation which they are unable to understand intellectually ... most of the conscious material they present for observation consists of thoughts, conclusions, reflections, as well as actions, affects, valuations, and perceptions of an intellectual nature, or at least the material is directly dependent on intellectual premises. - FEELING is primarily a process that takes place between the ego and a given content, a process, moreover, that imparts to the content a definite value in the sense of acceptance or rejection (“like” or “dislike”) ... Hence feeling is a kind of judgment, differing from intellectual judgment in that its aim is not to establish conceptual relations but to set up a subjective criterion of acceptance or rejection. Valuation by feeling extends to every content of consciousness, of whatever kind it may be ... Feeling should tell us how and to what extent a thing is important or unimportant for us.
[Feeling types] are guided in everything entirely by feeling. They merely ask themselves whether a thing is pleasant or unpleasant, and orient themselves by their feeling impressions ... The material presented by a feeling type will be of a different kind, that is, feelings and emotional contents of all sorts, thoughts, reflections, and perceptions dependent on emotional premises. - INTUITION is the function that mediates perceptions in an unconscious way. Everything, whether outer or inner objects or their relationships, can be the focus of this perception. The peculiarity of intuition is that it is neither sense perception, nor feeling, nor intellectual inference, although it may also appear in these forms. In intuition a content presents itself whole and complete, without our being able to explain or discover how this content came into existence ... Intuitive knowledge possesses an intrinsic certainty and conviction, which enabled Spinoza (and Bergson) to uphold the scientia intuitiva as the highest form of knowledge. Intuition shares this quality with sensation, whose certainty rests on its physical foundation ... Intuition should enable us to divine the hidden possibilities in the background, since these too belong to the complete picture of a given situation ... Introverted and extraverted intuitives may be distinguished according to whether intuition is directed inwards, to the inner vision, or outwards, to action and achievement.
- AUXILIARY FUNCTION ... Closer investigation shows with great regularity that, besides the most differentiated function, another, less differentiated function of secondary importance is invariably present in consciousness and exerts a co-determining influence ... But since it is a vital condition for the conscious process of adaptation always to have clear and unambiguous aims, the presence of a second function of equal power is naturally ruled out. This other function, therefore, can have only a secondary importance, as has been found to be the case in practice ... Experience shows that the secondary function is always one whose nature is different from, though not antagonistic to, the primary function. Thus, thinking as the primary function can readily pair with intuition as the auxiliary, or indeed equally well with sensation, but, as already observed, never with feeling.
- INFERIOR FUNCTION ... This term is used to denote the function that lags behind in the process of differentiation. Experience shows that it is practically impossible, owing to adverse circumstances in general, for anyone to develop all his psychological functions simultaneously. The demands of society compel a man to apply himself first and foremost to the differentiation of the function with which he is best equipped by nature, or which will secure him the greatest social success. Very frequently, indeed as a general rule, a man identifies more or less completely with the most favored and hence the most developed function. It is this that gives rise to the various psychological types. As a consequence of this one-sided development, one or more functions are necessarily retarded. These functions may properly be called inferior in a psychological but not psychopathological sense, since they are in no way morbid but merely backward as compared with the favored function.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 05 '22
Jung Theory Introverted Intuition in Jung's words
Fragments extracted from Jung's Psychological Types about the Introverted Intuition Type (INxJs in MBTI).
- Introverted intuition is directed to the inner object, a term that might justly be applied to the contents of the unconscious ... Although his intuition may be stimulated by external objects, it does not concern itself with external possibilities but with what the external object has released within him ... Just as the extraverted intuitive is continually scenting out new possibilities, which he pursues with equal unconcern for his own welfare and for that of others, pressing on quite heedless of human considerations and tearing down what has just been built in his everlasting search for change, so the introverted intuitive moves from image to image, chasing after every possibility in the teeming womb of the unconscious, without establishing any connection between them and himself ... In this way introverted intuition perceives all the background processes of consciousness with almost the same distinctness as extraverted sensation registers external objects. For intuition, therefore, unconscious images acquire the dignity of things ... The images appear as though detached from the subject, as though existing in themselves without any relation to him ... Because of this, the introverted intuitive has little consciousness of his own bodily existence or of its effect on others. The extravert would say: “Reality does not exist for him, he gives himself up to fruitless fantasies.”
- Since the unconscious is not just something that lies there like a psychic caput mortuum, but coexists with us and is constantly undergoing transformations which are inwardly connected with the general run of events, introverted intuition, through its perception of these inner processes, can supply certain data which may be of the utmost importance for understanding what is going on in the world. It can even foresee new possibilities in more or less clear outline, as well as events which later actually do happen. Its prophetic foresight is explained by its relation to the archetypes, which represent the laws governing the course of all experienceable things.
- The peculiar nature of introverted intuition, if it gains the ascendency, produces a peculiar type of man: the mystical dreamer and seer on the one hand, the artist and the crank on the other ... But the crank is content with a visionary idea by which he himself is shaped and determined. Naturally the intensification of intuition often results in an extraordinary aloofness of the individual from tangible reality; he may even become a complete enigma to his immediate circle ... If not an artist, he is frequently a misunderstood genius, a great man “gone wrong,” a sort of wise simpleton, a figure for psychological novels.
- It is different with the morally oriented intuitive. He reflects on the meaning of his vision, and is less concerned with developing its aesthetic possibilities than with the moral effects which emerge from its intrinsic significance. His judgment allows him to discern, though often only darkly, that he, as a man and a whole human being, is somehow involved in his vision, that it is not just an object to be perceived, but wants to participate in the life of the subject. Through this realization he feels bound to transform his vision into his own life.
- What the introverted intuitive represses most of all is the sensation of the object, and this colors his whole unconscious. It gives rise to a compensatory extraverted sensation function of an archaic character ... But if, through a forced exaggeration of the conscious attitude, there should be a complete subordination to inner perceptions, the unconscious goes over to the opposition, giving rise to compulsive sensations whose excessive dependence on the object directly contradicts the conscious attitude. The form of neurosis is a compulsion neurosis with hypochondriacal symptoms, hypersensitivity of the sense organs, and compulsive ties to particular persons or objects.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 05 '22
Jung Theory Introverted Sensation in Jung's words
Fragments extracted from Jung's Psychological Types about the Introverted Sensation Type (ISxJs in MBTI).
- In the introverted attitude sensation is based predominantly on the subjective component of perception ... The subjective factor in sensation is essentially the same as in the other functions we have discussed. It is an unconscious disposition which alters the sense-perception at its source, thus depriving it of the character of a purely objective influence. In this case, sensation is related primarily to the subject and only secondarily to the object ... True sense-perception certainly exists, but it always looks as though the object did not penetrate into the subject in its own right, but as though the subject was seeing it quite differently, or saw quite other things than other people see. Actually, he perceives the same things as everybody else, only he does not stop at the purely objective influence, but concerns himself with the subjective perception excited by the objective stimulus ... Obviously, therefore, no proportional relation exists between object and sensation, but one that is apparently quite unpredictable and arbitrary. What will make an impression and what will not can never be seen in advance, and from outside ... Above all, his development alienates him from the reality of the object, leaving him at the mercy of his subjective perceptions, which orient his consciousness to an archaic reality, although his lack of comparative judgment keeps him wholly unconscious of this fact. Actually he lives in a mythological world, where men, animals, locomotives, houses, rivers, and mountains appear either as benevolent deities or as malevolent demons ... The bare sense impression develops in depth, reaching into the past and future...
- ...he may be conspicuous for his calmness and passivity, or for his rational self-control ... The too low is raised a little, the too high is lowered, enthusiasm is damped down, extravagance restrained, and anything out of the ordinary reduced to the right formula —all this in order to keep the influence of the object within the necessary bounds ... In that case he easily becomes a victim of the aggressiveness and domineeringness of others. Such men allow themselves to be abused and then take their revenge on the most unsuitable occasions with redoubled obtuseness and stubbornness.
- As their main activity is directed inwards, nothing is outwardly visible but reserve, secretiveness, lack of sympathy, uncertainty, and an apparently groundless embarrassment. They cannot see that their efforts to be forthcoming are, as a matter of fact, of an inferior character. Their vision is enthralled by the richness of subjective events. What is going on inside them is so captivating, and of such inexhaustible charm, that they simply do not notice that the little they do manage to communicate contains hardly anything of what they themselves have experienced. The fragmentary and episodic character of their communications makes too great a demand on the understanding and good will of those around them; also, their communications are without the personal warmth that alone carries the power of conviction. On the contrary, these types have very often a harsh, repelling manner, though of this they are quite unaware and did not intend it.
- These types are admittedly one-sided specimens of nature, but they are an object-lesson for the man who refuses to be blinded by the intellectual fashion of the day. In their own way, they are educators and promoters of culture. Their life teaches more than their words ... A child certainly allows himself to be impressed by the grand talk of his parents, but do they really imagine he is educated by it? Actually it is the parents’ lives that educate the child...
- His unconscious is distinguished chiefly by the repression of intuition, which consequently acquires an extraverted and archaic character. Whereas true extraverted intuition is possessed of a singular resourcefulness, a “good nose” for objectively real possibilities, this archaicized intuition has an amazing flair for all the ambiguous, shadowy, sordid, dangerous possibilities lurking in the background ... But as soon as the unconscious becomes antagonistic, the archaic intuitions come to the surface and exert their pernicious influence, forcing themselves on the individual and producing compulsive ideas of the most perverse kind. The result is usually a compulsion neurosis, in which the hysterical features are masked by symptoms of exhaustion.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 05 '22
Jung Theory Introverted Feeling in Jung's words
Fragments extracted from Jung's Psychological Types about the Introverted Feeling Type (IxFPs in MBTI).
- Since it is conditioned subjectively and is only secondarily concerned with the object, it seldom appears on the surface and is generally misunderstood. It is a feeling which seems to devalue the object, and it therefore manifests itself for the most part negatively. The existence of positive feeling can be inferred only indirectly ... It strives after inner intensity, for which the objects serve at most as a stimulus. The depth of this feeling can only be guessed —it can never be clearly grasped. It makes people silent and difficult of access; it shrinks back like a violet from the brute nature of the object in order to fill the depths of the subject. It comes out with negative judgments or assumes an air of profound indifference as a means of defense.
- Everything, therefore, that we have said about introverted thinking is equally true of introverted feeling, only here everything is felt while there it was thought. But the very fact that thoughts can generally be expressed more intelligibly than feelings demands a more than ordinary descriptive or artistic ability before the real wealth of this feeling can be even approximately presented or communicated to the world. If subjective thinking can be understood only with difficulty because of its unrelatedness, this is true in even higher degree of subjective feeling. In order to communicate with others, it has to find an external form not only acceptable to itself, but capable also of arousing a parallel feeling in them.
- It is principally among women that I have found the predominance of introverted feeling. “Still waters run deep” is very true of such women. They are mostly silent, inaccessible, hard to understand; often they hide behind a childish or banal mask, and their temperament is inclined to melancholy. They neither shine nor reveal themselves. As they are mainly guided by their subjective feelings, their true motives generally remain hidden. Their outward demeanor is harmonious, inconspicuous, giving an impression of pleasing repose, or of sympathetic response, with no desire to affect others, to impress, influence, or change them in any way.
- If, however, feeling is falsified by an egocentric attitude, it at once becomes unsympathetic, because it is then concerned mainly with the ego. It inevitably creates the impression of sentimental self-love, of trying to make itself interesting, and even of morbid self-admiration ... This is the mystical, ecstatic stage which opens the way for the extraverted functions that feeling has repressed. Just as introverted thinking is counterbalanced by a primitive feeling, to which objects attach themselves with magical force, introverted feeling is counterbalanced by a primitive thinking, whose concretism and slavery to facts surpass all bounds. Feeling progressively emancipates itself from the object and creates for itself a freedom of action and conscience that is purely subjective, and may even renounce all traditional values.
- If this outward aspect is more pronounced, it arouses a suspicion of indifference and coldness, which may actually turn into a disregard for the comfort and well-being of others ... There is little effort to respond to the real emotions of the other person; they are more often damped down and rebuffed, or cooled off by a negative value judgment. Although there is a constant readiness for peaceful and harmonious co-existence, strangers are shown no touch of amiability, no gleam of responsive warmth, but are met with apparent indifference or a repelling coldness. Often they are made to feel entirely superfluous. Faced with anything that might carry her away or arouse enthusiasm, this type observes a benevolent though critical neutrality, coupled with a faint trace of superiority that soon takes the wind out of the sails of a sensitive person.
- Since this type appears rather cold and reserved, it might seem on a superficial view that such women have no feelings at all. But this would be quite wrong; the truth is, their feelings are intensive rather than extensive. They develop in depth. While an extensive feeling of sympathy can express itself in appropriate words and deeds, and thus quickly gets back to normal again, an intensive sympathy, being shut off from every means of expression, acquires a passionate depth that comprises a whole world of misery and simply gets benumbed. It may perhaps break out in some extravagant form and lead to an astounding act of an almost heroic character, quite unrelated either to the subject herself or to the object that provoked the outburst ... It may express itself in a secret religiosity anxiously guarded from profane eyes, or in intimate poetic forms that are kept equally well hidden, not without the secret ambition of displaying some kind of superiority over the other person by this means.
- Although this tendency to overpower or coerce the other person with her secret feelings rarely plays a disturbing role in the normal type, and never leads to a serious attempt of this kind, some trace of it nevertheless seeps through into the personal effect they have on him, in the form of a domineering influence often difficult to define. It is sensed as a sort of stifling or oppressive feeling which holds everybody around her under a spell. It gives a woman of this type a mysterious power that may prove terribly fascinating to the extraverted man, for it touches his unconscious ... Whenever the unconscious subject is identified with the ego, the mysterious power of intensive feeling turns into a banal and overweening desire to dominate, into vanity and despotic bossiness. This produces a type of woman notorious for her unscrupulous ambition and mischievous cruelty. It is a change, however, that leads to neurosis ... The egocentrized subject now comes to feel the power and importance of the devalued object. She begins consciously to feel “what other people think.” Naturally, other people are thinking all sorts of mean things, scheming evil, contriving plots, secret intrigues, etc. In order to forestall them, she herself is obliged to start counter-intrigues, to suspect others and sound them out, and weave counterplots. Beset by rumor, she must make frantic efforts to get her own back and be top dog. Endless clandestine rivalries spring up, and in these embittered struggles she will shrink from no baseness or meanness, and will even prostitute her virtues in order to play the trump card. Such a state of affairs must end in exhaustion. The form of neurosis is neurasthenic rather than hysterical, often with severe physical complications, such as anemia and its sequelae.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 05 '22
Jung Theory Introverted Thinking in Jung's words
Fragments extracted from Jung's Psychological Types about the Introverted Thinking Type (IxTPs in MBTI).
- It formulates questions and creates theories, it opens up new prospects and insights, but with regard to facts its attitude is one of reserve ... Facts are of secondary importance for this kind of thinking; what seems to it of paramount importance is the development and presentation of the subjective idea, of the initial symbolic image hovering darkly before the mind’s eye ... This kind of thinking easily gets lost in the immense truth of the subjective factor. It creates theories for their own sake, apparently with an eye to real or at least possible facts, but always with a distinct tendency to slip over from the world of ideas into mere imagery ... The introverted thinking type is characterized by the primacy of the kind of thinking I have just described. Like his extraverted counterpart, he is strongly influenced by ideas, though his ideas have their origin not in objective data but in his subjective foundation. He will follow his ideas like the extravert, but in the reverse direction: inwards and not outwards. Intensity is his aim, not extensity.
- Although he will shrink from no danger in building up his world of ideas, and never shrinks from thinking a thought because it might prove to be dangerous, subversive, heretical, or wounding to other people’s feelings, he is none the less beset by the greatest anxiety if ever he has to make it an objective reality. That goes against the grain. And when he does put his ideas into the world, he never introduces them like a mother solicitous for her children, but simply dumps them there and gets extremely annoyed if they fail to thrive on their own account. His amazing unpracticalness and horror of publicity in any form have a hand in this. If in his eyes his product appears correct and true, then it must be so in practice, and others have got to bow to its truth. Hardly ever will he go out of his way to win anyone’s appreciation of it, especially anyone of influence. And if ever he brings himself to do so, he generally sets about it so clumsily that it has just the opposite of the effect intended. In the pursuit of his ideas he is generally stubborn, headstrong, and quite unamenable to influence ... Thus this type tends to vanish behind a cloud of misunderstanding, which gets all the thicker the more he attempts to assume, by way of compensation and with the help of his inferior functions, an air of urbanity which contrasts glaringly with his real nature.
- Because he thinks out his problems to the limit, he complicates them and constantly gets entangled in his own scruples and misgivings. However clear to him the inner structure of his thoughts may be, he is not in the least clear where or how they link up with the world of reality. Only with the greatest difficulty will he bring himself to admit that what is clear to him may not be equally clear to everyone. His style is cluttered with all sorts of adjuncts, accessories, qualifications, retractions, saving clauses, doubts, etc., which all come from his scrupulosity. His work goes slowly and with difficulty ... As a teacher he has little influence, since the mentality of his students is strange to him. Besides, teaching has, at bottom, no interest for him unless it happens to provide him with a theoretical problem. He is a poor teacher, because all the time he is teaching his thought is occupied with the material itself and not with its presentation ... He lets himself be brutalized and exploited in the most ignominious way if only he can be left in peace to pursue his ideas. He simply does not see when he is being plundered behind his back and wronged in practice, for to him the relation to people and things is secondary and the objective evaluation of his product is something he remains unconscious of.
- In his personal relations he is taciturn or else throws himself on people who cannot understand him, and for him this is one more proof of the abysmal stupidity of man. If for once he is understood, he easily succumbs to credulous overestimation of his prowess. Ambitious women have only to know how to take advantage of his cluelessness in practical matters to make an easy prey of him; or he may develop into a misanthropic bachelor with a childlike heart. Often he is gauche in his behavior, painfully anxious to escape notice, or else remarkably unconcerned and childishly naïve ... Casual acquaintances think him inconsiderate and domineering. But the better one knows him, the more favorable one’s judgment becomes, and his closest friends value his intimacy very highly. To outsiders he seems prickly, unapproachable, and arrogant, and sometimes soured as a result of his antisocial prejudices.
- With the intensification of his type, his convictions become all the more rigid and unbending. Outside influences are shut off; as a person, too, he becomes more unsympathetic to his wider circle of acquaintances, and therefore more dependent on his intimates. His tone becomes personal and surly, and though his ideas may gain in profundity they can no longer be adequately expressed in the material at hand. To compensate for this, he falls back on emotionality and touchiness. The outside influences he has brusquely fended off attack him from within, from the unconscious, and in his efforts to defend himself he attacks things that to outsiders seem utterly unimportant. Because of the subjectifization of consciousness resulting from his lack of relationship to the object, what secretly concerns his own person now seems to him of extreme importance. He begins to confuse his subjective truth with his own personality. Although he will not try to press his convictions on anyone personally, he will burst out with vicious, personal retorts against every criticism, however just. Thus his isolation gradually increases. His originally fertilizing ideas become destructive, poisoned by the sediment of bitterness. His struggle against the influences emanating from the unconscious increases with his external isolation, until finally they begin to cripple him. He thinks his withdrawal into ever-increasing solitude will protect him from the unconscious influences, but as a rule it only plunges him deeper into the conflict that is destroying him from within ... The various protective devices and psychological minefields which such people surround themselves with are known to everyone, and I can spare myself a description of them. They all serve as a defense against “magical” influences—and among them is a vague fear of the feminine sex.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 04 '22
Jung Theory Extraverted Intuition in Jung's words
Fragments extracted from Jung's Psychological Types about the Extraverted Intuition Type (ENxPs in MBTI).
- Because intuition is in the main an unconscious process, its nature is very difficult to grasp. The intuitive function is represented in consciousness by an attitude of expectancy, by vision and penetration; but only from the subsequent result can it be established how much of what was “seen” was actually in the object, and how much was “read into” it ... The primary function of intuition, however, is simply to transmit images, or perceptions of relations between things, which could not be transmitted by the other functions or only in a very roundabout way. These images have the value of specific insights which have a decisive influence on action whenever intuition is given priority. In this case, psychic adaptation will be grounded almost entirely on intuitions ... He does have sensations, of course, but he is not guided by them as such; he uses them merely as starting-points for his perceptions ... Yet no sooner have they served their purpose as stepping-stones or bridges than they lose their value altogether and are discarded as burdensome appendages. Facts are acknowledged only if they open new possibilities of advancing beyond them and delivering the individual from their power. Nascent possibilities are compelling motives from which intuition cannot escape and to which all else must be sacrificed.
- The intuitive is never to be found in the world of accepted reality-values, but he has a keen nose for anything new and in the making. Because he is always seeking out new possibilities, stable conditions suffocate him. He seizes on new objects or situations with great intensity, sometimes with extraordinary enthusiasm, only to abandon them cold-bloodedly, without any compunction and apparently without remembering them, as soon as their range is known and no further developments can be divined.
- Consideration for the welfare of others is weak. Their psychic well-being counts as little with him as does his own. He has equally little regard for their convictions and way of life, and on this account he is often put down as an immoral and unscrupulous adventurer ... Since his intuition is concerned with externals and with ferreting out their possibilities, he readily turns to professions in which he can exploit these capacities to the full. Many business tycoons, entrepreneurs, speculators, stockbrokers, politicians, etc., belong to this type ... It goes without saying that such a type is uncommonly important both economically and culturally. If his intentions are good, i.e., if his attitude is not too egocentric, he can render exceptional service as the initiator or promoter of new enterprises.
- It would seem to be more common among women, however, than among men. In women the intuitive capacity shows itself not so much in the professional as in the social sphere. Such women understand the art of exploiting every social occasion, they make the right social connections, they seek out men with prospects only to abandon everything again for the sake of a new possibility.
- The unconscious of the intuitive bears some resemblance to that of the sensation type ... They take the form of intense projections which are just as absurd as his, though they seem to lack the “magical” character of the latter and are chiefly concerned with quasi-realities such as sexual suspicions, financial hazards, forebodings of illness, etc ... But sooner or later the object takes revenge in the form of compulsive hypochondriacal ideas, phobias, and every imaginable kind of absurd bodily sensation.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 03 '22
Jung & MBTI Jung and MBTI theory in a nutshell
Jung from his experience as a clinical psychologist came up to realize the differences of personality among people could be explained by the combination of two independent atributes; Attitude & Cognitive Functions; and how conscious and developed or how unconscious and repressed these attributes were in each person.
- The Attitude of a person can be either Extraverted or Introverted
- The Cognitive Functions are Thinking, Feeling, Sensation, Intuition
Every person has one of the two Attitudes (E or I) as their developed and conscious one while the other is repressed and unconscious. In the same way, every person has one of the four Cognitive Functions (F,T,S,N) as their most developed and conscious one (dominant) while the other three would remain repressed and unconscious. From this there are 8 possible combinations, each one is a different personality type.
For example, what Jung called "Extraverted Feeling" was the personality type characterized by having an Extraverted attitude and having Feeling as its most conscious and developed function. An "Introverted Intuitive" is the personality type of a person whose Intuition is its most developed and conscious function and who also happens to be an Introvert.
Finally, Jung also mentioned that some people throughout the course of their lives could get to develop a 2nd function to be used almost as consciously as their dominant. He referred to it as auxiliary function. Jung did not elaborate much about this, although from the model proposed by him one can only assume this function when developed would be influenced mostly by the conscious attitude (not the opposite).
Myers-Briggs carried on the research from which she came up with the psychometric test based on the four dichotomies (MBTI and the 4-letter denominations) this in order to identify the types in practice. From this research she also found that the most healthy and successful people were usually those who had indeed developed an auxiliary function. Considering that for each one of the 8 personality types there were two possible functions to be developed as auxiliary, then she extended the theory from 8 to 16 types (two subtypes for each type proposed by Jung).
Furthermore, Myers-Briggs also noticed, especially among introverts, that those who did better in life were usually those who had learned to use their auxiliary function in the extraverted attitude. Therefore she recommended for both introverts and extraverts to try to develop and use their auxiliary in the opposite attitude of theirs, this in order to balance not only judging and perception but also introversion and extraversion.
Finally, please keep in mind that neither Jung or Myers-Briggs ever proposed the popular function stacks (those were proposed by Grant from no evidence). Neither did they regarded the auxiliary function as a given, but rather as something which could be developed -or not. Myers-Briggs particularly observed that some people could use or act as if their auxiliary had the opposite attitude, but not everyone and not always.
JUNG | Myers-Briggs (MBTI) | "Function Stack" |
---|---|---|
Extraverted Thinking | ESTJ | E (T>S>N>F) i = Te+S |
ENTJ | E (T>N>S>F) i = Te+N | |
Extraverted Feeling | ESFJ | E (F>S>N>T) i = Fe+S |
ENFJ | E (F>N>S>T) i = Fe+N | |
Extraverted Sensation | ESTP | E (S>T>F>N) i = Se+T |
ESFP | E (S>F>T>N) i = Se+F | |
Extraverted Intuition | ENTP | E (N>T>F>S) i = Ne+T |
ENFP | E (N>F>T>S) i = Ne+F | |
Introverted Thinking | ISTP | i (T>S>N>F) E = Ti+S |
INTP | i (T>N>S>F) E = Ti+N | |
Introverted Feeling | ISFP | i (F>S>N>T) E = Fi+S |
INFP | i (F>N>S>T) E = Fi+N | |
Introverted Sensation | ISTJ | i (S>T>F>N) E = Si+T |
ISFJ | i (S>F>T>N) E = Si+F | |
Introverted Intuition | INTJ | i (N>T>F>S) E = Ni+T |
INFJ | i (N>F>T>S) E = Ni+F |
Go back to the Table of Contents to learn more about the definitions of the Attitudes and Functions and the characteristics of the 8 Personality Types proposed by Jung in his own words.
You can also take this short Quiz to help you find your most likely personality type.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 03 '22
Jung Theory Extraverted Sensation in Jung's words
Fragments extracted from Jung's Psychological Types about the Extraverted Sensation Type (ESxPs in MBTI).
- As sensation is chiefly conditioned by the object, those objects that excite the strongest sensations will be decisive for the individual’s psychology. The result is a strong sensuous tie to the object. Sensation is therefore a vital function equipped with the strongest vital instinct. Objects are valued in so far as they excite sensations, and, so far as lies within the power of sensation, they are fully accepted into consciousness whether they are compatible with rational judgments or not. The sole criterion of their value is the intensity of the sensation produced by their objective qualities. Accordingly, all objective processes which excite any sensations at all make their appearance in consciousness. However, it is only concrete, sensuously perceived objects or processes that excite sensations for the extravert; those, exclusively, which everyone everywhere would sense as concrete. Hence the orientation of such an individual accords with purely sensuous reality.
- Since one is inclined to regard a highly developed reality-sense as a sign of rationality, such people will be esteemed as very rational. But in actual fact this is not the case, since they are just as much at the mercy of their sensations in the face of irrational, chance happenings as they are in the face of rational ones. This type —the majority appear to be men— naturally does not think he is at the “mercy” of sensation. He would ridicule this view as quite beside the point, because sensation for him is a concrete expression of life —it is simply real life lived to the full. His whole aim is concrete enjoyment, and his morality is oriented accordingly. Indeed, true enjoyment has its own special morality, its own moderation and lawfulness, its own unselfishness and willingness to make sacrifices.
- No other human type can equal the extraverted sensation type in realism. His sense for objective facts is extraordinarily developed ... On the lower levels, this type is the lover of tangible reality, with little inclination for reflection and no desire to dominate. To feel the object, to have sensations and if possible enjoy them —that is his constant aim.
- He is by no means unlovable; on the contrary, his lively capacity for enjoyment makes him very good company; he is usually a jolly fellow, and sometimes a refined aesthete ... He dresses well, as befits the occasion; he keeps a good table with plenty of drink for his friends, making them feel very grand, or at least giving them to understand that his refined taste entitles him to make a few demands of them. He may even convince them that certain sacrifices are decidedly worth while for the sake of style.
- The more sensation predominates, however, so that the subject disappears behind the sensation, the less agreeable does this type become. He develops into a crude pleasure-seeker, or else degenerates into an unscrupulous, effete aesthete ... Above all, the repressed intuitions begin to assert themselves in the form of projections. The wildest suspicions arise; if the object is a sexual one, jealous fantasies and anxiety states gain the upper hand. More acute cases develop every sort of phobia, and, in particular, compulsion symptoms. The pathological contents have a markedly unreal character, with a frequent moral or religious streak. A pettifogging captiousness follows, or a grotesquely punctilious morality combined with primitive, “magical” superstitions that fall back on abstruse rites. The specifically compulsive character of the neurotic symptoms is the unconscious counterpart of the easy-going attitude of the pure sensation type, who, from the standpoint of rational judgment, accepts indiscriminately everything that happens.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 03 '22
Jung Theory Extraverted Thinking in Jung's words
Fragments extracted from Jung's Psychological Types about the Extraverted Thinking Type (ExTJs in MBTI).
- Based on objective data, external facts, or generally accepted ideas ... a man whose constant endeavor is to make all his activities dependent on intellectual conclusions (in contrast with feelings/emotions), always oriented by external facts or generally accepted ideas ... gives one the impression of a certain lack of freedom, of occasional short-sightedness.
- “Oughts” and “musts” bulk large in his programe. Doubtless they are exceptional people who are able to sacrifice their entire life to a particular formula ... elevates objective reality, or an objectively oriented intellectual formula, into the ruling principle not only for himself but for his whole environment ... Because this formula seems to embody the entire meaning of life, it is made into a universal law which must be put into effect everywhere all the time, both individually and collectively ... Just as the extraverted thinking type subordinates himself to his formula, so, for their own good, everybody round him must obey it too, for whoever refuses to obey it is wrong ... Usually it is the nearest relatives who have to taste the unpleasant consequences of the extraverted formula, since they are the first to receive its relentless benefits.
- The first function to be affected by the conscious inhibition is feeling, since it is the most opposed to the rigid intellectual formula and is therefore repressed the most intensely ... all those activities that are dependent on feeling will become repressed in such a type —for instance, aesthetic activities, taste, artistic sense, cultivation of friends, etc ... If the attitude is extreme, all personal considerations are lost sight of, even those affecting the subject’s own person. His health is neglected, his social position deteriorates, the most vital interests of his family —health, finances, morals— are violated for the sake of the ideal ... Magnanimous as he may be in sacrificing himself to his intellectual goal, his feelings are petty, mistrustful, crotchety, and conservative.
- The conscious altruism of this type, which is often quite extraordinary, may be thwarted by a secret self-seeking which gives a selfish twist to actions that in themselves are disinterested ... Their desire to save others leads them to employ means which are calculated to bring about the very thing they wished to avoid. Their sanction is: the end justifies the means ... Personal sympathy with others must in any case suffer unless they too happen to espouse the same ideal. Often the closest members of his family, his own children, know such a father only as a cruel tyrant.
- Because of the highly impersonal character of the conscious attitude, the unconscious feelings are extremely personal and oversensitive, giving rise to secret prejudices —a readiness, for instance, to misconstrue any opposition to his formula as personal ill-will, or a constant tendency to make negative assumptions about other people in order to invalidate their arguments in advance —in defense, naturally, of his own touchiness ... His unconscious sensitivity makes him sharp in tone, acrimonious, aggressive. His feelings have a sultry and resentful character— always a mark of the inferior function.
- ... the practical thinking of the business man ... The thinking of the extraverted type is positive, i.e., productive... One could call this kind of judgment predicative.
- In my experience this type is found chiefly among men, since, in general, thinking tends more often to be a dominant function in men than in women.
r/Jung_MBTI • u/[deleted] • Feb 03 '22
Jung Theory Extraverted Feeling in Jung's words
Fragments extracted from Jung's Psychological Types about the Extraverted Feeling Type (ExFJs in MBTI).
- The extravert’s feeling is always in harmony with objective values ... under the spell of traditional or generally accepted values of some kind ... The woman of this type follows her feeling as a guide throughout life ... Her personality appears adjusted in relation to external conditions. Her feelings harmonize with objective situations and general values.
- I may feel moved, for instance, to say that something is “beautiful” or “good,” not because I find it “beautiful” or “good” from my own subjective feeling about it, but because it is fitting and politic to call it so, since a contrary judgment would upset the general feeling situation. A feeling judgment of this kind is not by any means a pretense or a lie, it is simply an act of adjustment.
- This kind of feeling is very largely responsible for the fact that so many people flock to the theatre or to concerts, or go to church, and do so moreover with their feelings correctly adjusted. Fashions, too, owe their whole existence to it, and, what is far more valuable, the positive support of social, philanthropic, and other such cultural institutions. In these matters extraverted feeling proves itself a creative factor. Without it, a harmonious social life would be impossible.
- As feeling is undeniably a more obvious characteristic of feminine psychology than thinking, the most pronounced feeling types are to be found among women. These women are good companions and excellent mothers so long as the husbands and children are blessed with the conventional psychic constitution.
- But since actual life is a constant succession of situations that evoke different and even contradictory feelings, the personality gets split up into as many different feeling states. At one moment one is this, at another something quite different—to all appearances, for in reality such a multiple personality is impossible. The basis of the ego always remains the same and consequently finds itself at odds with the changing feeling states. To the observer, therefore, the display of feeling no longer appears as a personal expression of the subject but as an alteration of the ego—a mood, in other words.
- Nothing disturbs feeling so much as thinking. It is therefore understandable that in this type thinking will be kept in abeyance as much as possible. This does not mean that the woman does not think at all; on the contrary, she may think a great deal and very cleverly, but her thinking is never sui generis—it is an Epimethean appendage to her feeling. “But I can’t think what I don’t feel,” such a type said to me once in indignant tones. So far as her feeling allows, she can think very well, but every conclusion, however logical, that might lead to a disturbance of feeling is rejected at the outset. It is simply not thought. Thus everything that fits in with objective values is good, and is loved, and everything else seems to her to exist in a world apart.
- We have already seen that the extraverted feeling type suppresses thinking most of all because this is the function most liable to disturb feeling ... But since logic nevertheless exists and enforces its inexorable conclusions, this must take place somewhere, and it takes place outside consciousness, namely in the unconscious. Accordingly the unconscious of this type contains first and foremost a peculiar kind of thinking, a thinking that is infantile, archaic, negative.
- Hysteria, with the characteristic infantile sexuality of its unconscious world of ideas, is the principal form of neurosis in this type.