Continued from Why Freud is ISTJ, Part 1.
Written by the CT Admins in reply to the comment by AndrahilAdrian here.
We are glad to see some elaboration for the argument that Freud is INTJ. It is clear that AndrahilAdrian has a very strong intuition that Freud is INTJ, and as we said, we used to believe that he was NTJ too. But the more research we did, the less substantiated did we find that claim to be. Anyway, as we said, our assessment is an unconventional one, and well – if our first article on why Freud is ISTJ didn’t convince you, then we probably can’t convince you. We can, however, reply to some of AndrahilAdrian’s arguments.
1
You ask why we point out that Freud took a data-oriented approach. We simply point out that Freud relied on data because you say in your original comment that he “didn’t use a data-oriented approach.”
2
You point out that Freud’s theory was more abstract than that of your average man’s. Of course, we agree that Freud’s theory was more abstract than what the average Joe comes up with. He was a genius after all. So he had the ability to think abstractly, but did he also have a preference for it? That is what we are contending. This quote by Horace Gray elucidates what we mean:
“… in [Freud’s] mental make-up sensation was a far more active element than intuition. This statement is of course perfectly compatible with the thesis that intuition, though the less active of the two functions in him and though deprecated by him, may have been of a quality superior to most men. But it cannot be repeated too often that the types … aim to discriminate between people, not in merit, but broadly in their usual ways of mental operations..” – Horace Gray: Freud and Jung; Their Contrasting Psychological Types, 1949
3
We’re glad to see that you agree that an Si type could have done what Freud did. However, you then point out that because Freud’s theories are so bizarre, he can’t be an Si type. But that is exactly where we disagree: The inner mental life of an Si type is the most idiosyncratic and inexpressible of all the types. As Myers says of the Si types, they have “an extremely eccentric and individual inner self, which sees things other people do not see.” This is also what Jung says of the inner life of the Si type in Psychological Types §650: “Did there exist an aptitude for expression … the irrationality of this type would be extraordinarily striking.”
Their inner life is tucked away behind a façade of practical “matter of fact”-ness, but on the inside they are stimulated by idiosyncratic reactions to sense impressions and their inner life is the most bizarre of all the types. But in most Si types, there is no capacity for expressing their inner life in words, and for this reason we almost never see the internal archaic consciousness of the Si type.
Likewise, in analyzing the bizarreness of Freud’s theories, it is important to distinguish the objective character of Ne and the dependence on the subjective disposition that is the hallmark of Ni. Ne is dependent on the outer objects whereas Ni is chiefly determined by the Ni-type’s own consciousness. Therefore, inferior Ne, as experienced in the ISJ-types, instills the subject with sinister premonitions of an objective character, that is to say, of society collapsing upon itself, of the oceans rising to devour our cities, or everything in psychic life somehow originating in purely “objective”, somatic causes.
4
You say that Freud’s ideas have little application to the practical world because he was an intuitive, yet you don’t mention that Freudianism was the method of psychotherapy all over the Western world for twenty-some years. You also say that because Freud was an intuitive type, his theories are not applicable to modern psychotherapy. But then you also say that Adler was more intuitive than Freud, and Adler’s ideas are actually very applicable to the modern understanding of psychotherapy.
5
You point out that we shouldn’t rely on Freud specialists because they are biased in being accustomed with his ideas. But in our opinion, that is the wrong protest to make: The question of Freud’s type is not solely a question of the ideas; it is just as much, if not more so, about the biographical details surrounding them: How did the ideas come about? Were they instances of pure theorizing or were they responses to practical challenges in his life as a nerve doctor? Did his ideas spring on him, fully formed out of the unconscious, or were they pieced together bit by bit? Likewise, how was his life? Did he live a stable and calm life, while being plagued by that pessimistic view of the future that comes from repressing Ne? Or did he showcase some of that “terrible immodesty” that, in von Franz’s view, comes from repressing the Se function?
As we point out in the main article, Freud purposely took care to obscure details about himself. In our opinion, then, we have to rely on specialists, not generalists, when dealing with Freud. Again, the parallel to Samuel Huntington is clear: You can also find generalist textbooks saying that Huntington-the-man must be combative and dogmatic simply because of his theory. What is needed is the context surrounding the theory, for as we say: Any function can in principle think up any idea – the question is how and why it does it.
Likewise we would point out that the Freud specialists we use have widely different biases, being for, against, and neutral to Freud (and Kaufmann isn’t a Freud specialist, but a Nietzsche specialist). Yet they all have the same experience that we had: From afar, he looks like what we would paraphrase to be an NTJ. Up close he looks like an Si type.
6
Still, we must accept your rebuttal, pointing out that Kant was routinized and yet was INTP. That is a good counterargument. Yet to understand why we permit ourselves to look for such irregularities in the case of Freud, consider that Kant’s inferior function was Fe (and his lifestyle did indeed show all the hallmarks of repressed Fe) while an INTJ’s repressed function is Se. Please refer to von Franz’s five or so pages on repressed Se in Lectures on Jung’s Typology to see what we mean.
7
Then you say that an STJ specializes in dealing with past sensual experiences and would be inclined to examine them on their own terms and avoid confusing them with the experiences of others. This is not correct, as Jung’s chapter on Si in Psychological Types so clearly spells out: To the Si type, it is the subjective reaction to sensations that stands at the center of the cognitive life. It is not raw and subjective sensations, but a subjectivized take on them. So the experiences are not examined on their own terms (that is Se), nor can Si avoid confounding the experiences of others with that of their own. Introverted, subjective perception is the filter which all of the psychic material that is accepted by Si must pass through. Si types may still accept things and deal with them in a wholly practical manner, but that is not because of the Si function, but rather because of their Te or Fe function. As Myers says, Si must be balanced by Te/Fe or you will have a wholly inaccessible personality that is entirely bound up its own experience.
8
Then you say that INTJs specialize in abstract, universal experiences and that they will be tempted to apply that method to their own unique experiences, repressing the actual experience and explaining it away as universal. This is correct; we agree. But then, if we agree that INTJs repress their actual experience, this leaves us with the salient data point that Freud did not repress his actual experience, as we also make clear in the original article. He contextualized it and used facts as a vehicle for theory, rather than the other way around.
You offer the example that he used his own personal experience as the bedrock of his theory, but this is exactly an argument for Si. With Ni types, it is the other way around: They use mental schemata as a way to interact with their inferior sensation. As Myers says, Ni types “use the inner understanding in the interests of the objective situation,” meaning they must have some intellectual idea to properly understand their own sensation, whereas Si types are led to ideas through their interaction with the physical world.
Another way to say it is that Si types are guided by impressions of the outer world that they stack up to form a complete picture in the end, whereas Ni types are guided by mental inspiration that tends to arise as sudden and seemingly complete insight into the whole of the experience.
As Jung says in Psychological Types §656-658, the Ni type does not perceive that his theories have any direct relation to his personal situation. In Jung’s words, the Ni type “would never imagine that the image he perceived might in some way refer to himself.” But Freud could freely admit that most of his theories and ideas were nothing but images that originally referred to himself.
9
Finally, you say that you think every quote on our More on Freud page could apply to an INTJ. Hopefully, you will grant that that does not extend to this, as found on that same page:
“[I] wrestled for a long time for every little piece [of my theory and] modified it continually in constant touch with observation.” – Freud
However, you bring up the quote that V.W. Odajnyk used to support his thesis that Freud was INFP:
“I was not cut out for inductive investigation. … My whole make-up is intuitive, and … in setting out to establish the purely empirical science of [psychoanalysis] I [have] subjected myself to an extraordinary discipline.” – Freud
We have included that quote, as well as many other quotes, that point to Freud being different types on that page. You can’t just select one quote and then say that “that settles it”, but perhaps your tongue was in your cheek while you wrote it. However, it is good that you bring it up, because there are a number of problems with that quote that we were looking to bring up to Odajnyk before he unfortunately passed away.
First, we would repeat that one quote does not decide anything, but we still think that this is a rather thin case for Freud as intuitive on Odajnyk’s part. If we imagined for a moment that this quote was our only source on Freud (i.e. assigned to it a centrality which it doesn’t actually possess), here is our commentary to it:
- Freud says that he is not cut out for inductive, empirical investigation. That would mostly indicate that he isn’t a Te dominant, if anything. But it is of some value to note that he did not identify more closely with the standard operating procedure of Te if he is indeed an ISTJ, so much is true.
- Freud says that he is intuitive, but intuition in the Jungian parlance is not the same as intuition in everyday parlance. Intuition is kind of a misnomer, and in our experience, people who, without knowledge of the test, are apt to describe themselves as ‘intuitive’ are more often sensation types, whereas actual intuitives, and particularly NTs, tend to frown a bit over that word when they first hear it applied to themselves.
- And the reverse is also true: As van der Hoop notes in Conscious Orientation, Freud often deprecated intuition (as defined in common parlance) and distanced himself from it. This shows the danger of using a single quote to determine someone’s type, as Odajnyk did.
So all in all, we think Odajnyk’s attempt to argue that Freud was INFP on the basis of that quote constitutes a rather weak case. It is not that the quote doesn’t say anything interesting; it is just that there is a number of problems with it and that it is not representative of the overall picture that one gets when reading Freud (and in fact, we don’t quite know of any one quote that is).
Conclusion
So that is the extent of the commentary to your commentary. As we said, the hope that we will be able to convince one another on this point is probably utopian in these matters. As we said, we used to believe that Freud was NTJ too, but our experience of researching Freud, reading through thousands of pages of his letters and works, as well as the eyewitness accounts of his life, the evidence fell apart in our hands. Certainly, it would be less awkward for us if we didn’t have to defend the notion of Freud as ISTJ.
But nevertheless we feel we have to follow the evidence wherever it leads. Anything else would be repeating the mistake that Freud made in his research. ;-)