By Ryan Smith
In preparation for our own piece on why Jung is INFJ, we will recap some of the previous discussions of his type. This article will review the assessments offered in major books and articles between 2000 and 2012.
Ann Casement (2001): Carl Gustav Jung
In her general introduction to Jung and his work, the Jungian analyst Ann Casement writes:
“[Jung] was an introvert, that is, someone for whom the inner world has far more importance than that of the outer world of objects, and he claimed that what took place in his own mind was of greater significance than anything else in life. He exemplified introverted thinking, which will be elaborated in the section on his typology further in the book.”[1]
However, in the explanation of introverted thinking later in the book, we do not get any arguments pertaining to Jung, only to introverted thinking. So it would appear that Casement’s purpose is not so much to analyze or assess Jung’s personal psychology, but more generally to introduce Jung’s theories to the reader. Since Casement seems well-versed in the Jungian corpus, I would venture the guess that she was probably following Jung’s own self-assessment when she wrote that he was a Ti type.
Diana Baynes Jansen (2003): Jung’s Apprentice: Biography of Helton Godwin Baynes
In a biography of Jung’s friend and translator Helton “Peter” Godwin Baynes, Diana Baynes, who appears to be a relative of Peter Baynes, writes the following:
“… Peter was to become Jung’s chief assistant and by now a warm relationship had developed between them. It was as though Jung recognized in Peter a man of stature who was, in terms of his personality type, his exact opposite. … Jung’s typology, as an introverted, intuitive, thinking type, was almost diametrically opposite to Peter’s which was an extravert, feeling, intuitive. Jung introduced Peter to the possibility of a rich inner life. He enabled him to find a powerful source of experience from within himself instead of relying on other people and outer life to give him his sense of himself.”[2]
As we get no explanation, notes, or further fleshing-out from Jansen, we can only assume that her argument is as stated above: In Jansen’s view, Jung is an introverted intuitive thinking type (i.e. Ni with T or Ti with N) because he lived “a rich inner life” and was able to orientate himself on the basis of inner experience. This is a valid argument, although obviously not extensive. Indeed it is quite true that both Ni and Ti types can be inner-directed in the matter described, but the stipulations given above rule out neither the Si types (who indeed have a “magical inner life”),[3] the Fi types (who are “mainly oriented to the fathomless store of primordial images”),[4] nor the Ni type with auxiliary F (of whom it is also a defining feature that he “apprehends the images arising from the a priori inherited foundations of the unconscious”).[5]
Paul B. Farrell (2004): The Millionaire Code: 16 Paths to Wealth Building
In what appears to be a “get rich quick” book of the self-help variety, the author Paul B. Farrell finds Jung to be two different types:
“Scholars who have studied Jung and his work on personality typologies generally see Jung as a Visionary (INTP), largely because of his total focus on developing a scientific approach to psychology. Yet anyone familiar with Jung in his private life, especially thorough his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, will clearly see a Mystic Hero (INFP) behind the visionary mask, and both are the real man.”[6]
Farrell appears to be deferring to the verdict of others when he casts Jung as an INTP (though it is telling that he does not touch upon Jung’s self-identification as a Ti type). Conversely, Farrell appears to be offering his own opinion when he says that the Jung of Memories, Dreams, Reflections is an INFP.
Farrell’s line of argument is unfortunate insofar as Memories, Dreams, Reflections is not a genuine autobiography and thus not a look at “the real man,” but rather a series of interviews that were bent into literary shape by Aniela Jaffé. According to the early research of Sonu Shamdasani and Deirdre Bair, these interviews were not only violently reworked by Jaffé, but also subjected to pressure from the book’s publishers to conform as much as possible to the familiar format of a standard biography, all in the name of handsome sales figures.[7] Farrell’s INFP-Jung, as he emerges from the pages of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, is thus inseparable from that of a literary fiction.
John Giannini (2004): Compass of the Soul: Archetypal Guides to a Fuller Life
In his 2004 book, Compass of the Soul, John Giannini asserts that Jung was an Ni type:
“During this time [i.e. 1912-1916] Jung discovered his native typology as an introverted intuitive: in the past he had considered himself an introverted thinking type, evidence that he himself had been caught in a typological complex.
In terms of an archetypal/complex theory of the psyche, Jung had been born innately intuitive. However, for whatever reason, probably because our Western culture is so thinking oriented and the Swiss so dominated by sensation and thinking, Jung had erroneously adopted thinking as his dominant type. This meant that his ego complex was caught in a type complex not native to him, while his true intuitive type stays in a secondary and despised place in his intuitive thinking (NT) coupling and haunted him as a semi-unconscious complex.”[8]
As Giannini is no doubt aware, Jung never publicly said that he was an Ni type, but always said he was a Ti type. However, by way of personal correspondence, Giannini has told me that his assessment of Jung as an Ni type is influenced by John Beebe’s assessment. Beebe asserts that the Notes on the Seminar Given in 1925 reveal that Jung secretly considered himself an Intuitive type, while at the same time he kept stating in public that he was a Ti type, albeit with certain covert cop-outs and qualifications (such as slipping into the past tense even when asked to answer in the present tense).[9]
Lucy Huskinson (2004): Nietzsche and Jung: The Whole Self in the Union of Opposites
The topic of Jung’s identification with Nietzsche is quite a fruitful one, which we shall return to. For now, Lucy Huskinson’s 2004 offering, Nietzsche and Jung: The Whole Self in the Union of Opposites, has the following to say about the matter:
“It is thus not unreasonable to conclude that, being fearful of his identification with the insane Nietzsche, Jung might try, unconsciously or not, to work through his own psychological issues using Nietzsche to carry his complexes. After all, Nietzsche was the most suitable and obvious candidate for this – being the ‘archetypal’ mad genius, with a similar family background and psychological disposition to Jung (i.e. both being intellectual-intuitive types).”[10]
And:
“As an intuitive type, Jung is encouraged to think passively or fantastically. The final paragraph of Psychological Types (1921) supports our claim above. Here Jung’s discussion of Nietzsche can be read as a description of Jung himself.”[11]
Huskinson then cites the part of Psychological Types §242 (which is oddly not the final paragraph of Psychological Types) that could serve as a description of both Jung and Nietzsche:
“In his initial work he unwittingly sets the facts of his own personal psychology in the foreground. This is all quite in harmony with the intuitive attitude, which characteristically perceives the outer through the medium of the inner, sometimes even at the expense of reality. By means of this attitude he also gained deep insight into the Dionysian qualities of his unconscious.”[12]
Huskinson’s reasoning here calls for some elaboration. First, as readers of Psychological Types will know, “intellect” is frequently used as a synonym for the thinking function throughout the book.[13] So when Huskinson says that both Nietzsche and Jung were “intellectual-intuitive types,” she would seem to be saying that both were NT types.
As Huskinson groups Nietzsche and Jung together on the basis of being similar types, our discussion calls for a digression on Jung’s opinions about Nietzsche’s type. First, in Psychological Types §242, Jung argues that:
“The fact that it is just the psychological functions of intuition on the one hand and sensation and instinct on the other that Nietzsche emphasizes must be characteristic of his own personal psychology. He must surely be reckoned an intuitive with leanings towards introversion. … His lack of rational moderation and conciseness argues for the intuitive type in general.”
So Nietzsche must be an Ni type. But we can get even closer to the matter, for Jung also says in Psychological Types §235-238 that Nietzsche’s Feeling is bound up with his inferior Sensation, while his Thinking is bound up with Intuition. So in chapter III of Psychological Types, Jung clearly thinks that Nietzsche is an Ni-T-F-Se type.[14]
But then, later still in Psychological Types §632, Nietzsche is no longer an Ni type:
“Just as we might take Darwin as an example of the normal extraverted thinking type, the normal introverted thinking type could be represented by Kant. The one speaks with facts, the other relies on the subjective factor. Darwin ranges over the wide field of objective reality. Kant restricts himself to a critique of knowledge. Cuvier and Nietzsche would form an even sharper contrast.”
So whereas Nietzsche was an Ni with T type in Psychological Types chapter III, Nietzsche now seems to be a Ti type in Psychological Types chapter X. But Jung had more to say about Nietzsche’s type. In his Seminar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, given in 1934 – 1939, Jung would return to the topic of Nietzsche’s type in order to state the following:
“I have heard of mothers wanting to be paid for their love only too often. Nietzsche had not because he was a man with very developed intuition and intellect, but his feeling developed slowly.”[15]
As well as the following:
“[Nietzsche’s] main function is surely intuition, which would be up above, connected with the brain, with consciousness, and that is in opposition to the things below, namely the other three functions.”[16]
So strictly speaking, Jung has said that Nietzsche is an Intuitive dominant type with auxiliary thinking, but in his seminar on Zarathustra, Jung has not said whether he now considers Nietzsche an introvert or an extrovert. However, any such doubt is soon dispelled, as in the same work, Jung also says the following:
“In Nietzsche’s case … the unconscious came up with all its extraversion and … he locked the complex away from himself and dissolved in a tremendous extraversion within his isolation.”[17]
So alas – if Nietzsche’s unconscious is extroverted, then by implication of the enantiodromia – “the law of running counter to” – that fuels Jung’s thinking on type, his most conscious, most differentiated function must therefore be introverted.[18]
Thus, to sum up Jung’s views on Nietzsche’s type:
- In Psychological Types chapter III (1921), Nietzsche is an Ni-T-F-Se type.
- In Psychological Types chapter X (1921), Nietzsche is a Ti type.
- In Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar (1934–1939), Nietzsche is an Ni-T-F-Se type again.
So it would seem that all in all, Jung considered Nietzsche an Ni type with T, whereas he always, as far as we know, considered himself a Ti type with N. So in Jung’s own view, he did not regard himself as being the same type as Nietzsche, though he certainly did have a protracted identification with Nietzsche, as Huskinson also says.
Finally, in the latter part of the quote that I reproduced above, Huskinson invariably seems to say that Thinking gave way to Intuition in Jung’s psyche (“as an intuitive type, Jung is encouraged to think passively or fantastically. … Jung’s discussion of Nietzsche [in Psychological Types, chapter III] can be read as a description of Jung himself”). So in Huskinson’s case, given that she seems to agree with Jung’s assessments of Nietzsche and himself as introverts, it would be reasonable to assume that she assessed Jung to be an Ni type with auxiliary T.[19]
Theo A. Cope (2006): Fear of Jung: The Complex Doctrine and Emotional Science
In his book, Fear of Jung, Theo A. Cope, who holds an M.A. in psychology, asserts the following:
“Jung’s intense focus on the images of emotional complexes can be largely explained by his psychological disposition: as an introverted-intuitive person, he perceived these images more clearly than others of a different type might. … Jung was particularly intuitive.
In his description of psychological types, when discussing the introverted-intuitive and introverted-thinking type, it is as if he gives us an in-depth look at himself. Both types are directed to the inner objects of the psyche. For an introverted-intuitive these images acquire the status of things and appear as if they are detached from the individual.”[20]
Now formally speaking, saying that “Jung was particularly intuitive” does not in itself suggest that he is an intuitive type, but the overall flavor of the passage does strongly seem to suggest it. Whether intended or not, it would seem that Cope’s statements here invoke Jung’s own characterization of the Ni type as one that “apprehends the images arising from the a priori inherited foundations of the unconscious. These archetypes, whose innermost nature is inaccessible to experience…”[21]
Poring over Fear of Jung, it does not seem that Cope gives us the necessary premises for determining the function order which he had imagined for Jung (if any). But on the whole of it, I would reckon that the classically Jungian conception of Ni-Ti-Fe-Se would be the most reasonable, based on Cope’s chosen means of expression.
John M. Berecz (2009): Theories of Personality – A Zonal Perspective
An excellent and much overlooked writer in the field of personality studies is John M. Berecz, who holds a Ph.D. in psychology. He has given the following assessment of Jung in the textbook Theories of Personality. Describing Jung’s original eight types, Berecz arrives at the Ni type to say:
“Intuitive Introverts: With intuition as king and a focus on inner experiences, these individuals tend to be seen as mystics, dreamers, or just “different.” They fit the stereotype of the “peculiar artist” or “mad scientist” who sometimes turns out strange but beautiful creations. They sometimes become so shaped by their inner lives that they appear as “oddballs.” Following his break with Freud, Jung apparently functioned in this mode.”[22]
So Berecz seems to think that by 1913, when Jung had broken with Freud, Jung was an Ni type. Berecz’s assessment seems to lend support to the view that Jung may have changed types from earlier in his life, where he was certainly more scientifically-minded, to become an Ni type after 1913. Certainly, few writers doubt that Jung (like Plato) gravitated towards the ever more mystical as his career progressed, but whether this transition was really due to a change in Jung’s psychological type, or whether it was merely the result of an increased individuation as Jung aged, is still highly contestable.
Turning back to Berecz’s book, one more thing remains for us to address: Berecz writes of Jung that he seemed to like Intuition better than the other three functions.[23] Though not a contradiction as such, it would seem that Berecz is not aware that Jung always considered himself a Thinking type, not an Intuitive type. Likewise, Jung’s characterization of the Ni (and Si) types as being, from an “extraverted and rationalistic standpoint … indeed the most useless of men,”[24] or of the Ne type as one whose “consideration for the welfare of others is weak,”[25] or who is full of “intense projections which are … absurd.”[26] However, that said, Berecz appears to base his claim that Jung likes Intuition best off Jung’s Tavistock Lectures where Jung does indeed give pride of place to Intuition, compared to his other three functions:
“The last-defined function, intuition, seems to be very mysterious, and you know I am “very mystical,” as people say. This then is one of my pieces of mysticism! Intuition is a function by which you see round corners, which you really cannot do. … It is a function which normally you do not use if you live a regular life within four walls and do regular routine work.”[27]
Given Jung’s numerous remarks on how ordinary life stands in contrast to individuation, it would thus make sense for Berecz to conclude that Jung liked intuition best on the basis of the Tavistock Lectures. But not on the basis of Psychological Types.
Nicholas Lewin (2009): Jung on War, Politics, and Nazi Germany
Lewin’s book on Jung is not in the main concerned with typology, although it does (almost) make the claim that Jung is an introverted intuitive type:
“Jung was a quietist who had an introverted, contemplative element in his character. Jung at times behaved like a medieval sage. In this manner he occasionally used an intuitively archetypical approach to politics.”[28]
It is worth noting that Lewin states that Jung had an “intensely introverted nature”[29] and that Jung had an “intuitive archetypical perception” that paid “close attention to almost imperceptible feelings and intuitions that is radically at odds with the realist perspective.”[30] This, indeed, is very close to Jung’s own description of the Ni types, which reads that “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,“ who “has little consciousness of his own bodily existence,” [31] and who “apprehends the images arising from the a priori inherited foundations of the unconscious. These archetypes, whose innermost nature is inaccessible to experience…”[32]
While Lewin’s statements may not amount to a full-fledged claim that Jung is an Ni type, the quoted statements certainly come close, and in my opinion it would be safe to say that casting Jung as an Ni type was probably Lewin’s intended meaning.
James Graham Johnston (2011): Jung’s Compass of Psychological Types
In an overlooked, original, and highly idiosyncratic (if not to say solipsistic) work on Jung’s typology, James Graham Johnston, who has crafted his own operationalization of Jung’s typology as an alternative to the Myers-Briggs, offers us his personal view of Jung’s type:
“Consistent with his deeply introverted orientation, Jung seemed to initially conceive of his whole system of psychology from illusive yet compelling images.”[33]
“Jung, with an admitted preference for the thinking function, had difficulty grasping the depth and breadth of the feeling function. The intellect, he said, is incapable of grasping the full nature of the feeling function.”[34]
So Johnston relays to the reader how Jung identified himself as a Ti type. But what does Johnston think? Well, in his general description of the Fe type, Johnston offers the following observation:
“Jung provides less insight into the behavioral attributes of people favoring this type [i.e. the Fe type] (likely Jung’s own shadow type), but Marie-Louise von Franz, one of Jung’s close associates, provides some helpful commentary.”[35]
Hence, in Johnston’s view, Jung is indeed also a Ti type.[36] But what is Jung’s auxiliary function; is it Intuition or Sensation? Johnston answers the question when describing the Ni type:
“Jung, too, likely relied on this type as an adjunct to introverted thinking. His revolutionary model of the human psyche transcends rational understanding; it arrived as a series of images and ideas that emerged during his years of a ‘confrontation with the unconscious.'”[37]
So that should be clear: To Johnston, Jung is a Ti-Ni type. However, it isn’t clear: For Johnston then reverses himself:
“The term “powerful intellect” refers to introverted thinking; the qualities of extraverted thinking are more programmatic than intellectual. Kant, Plato, Schopenhauer, and Jung himself would be examples of philosophical intuition supported by a powerful intellect.”[38]
Just as we had established that Jung was a Ti-Ni type, he is now an Ni-Ti type. That is rather confusing to the reader, and indeed, in Johnston’s book there is no indication of why Jung should suddenly have changed types.
And later still in the book, Jung is now suddenly a Ti-Ni type again:
“Jung himself could be a good personal example of someone who was predisposed toward introverted thinking paired with introverted intuition. Jung so ambitiously forged ahead with his ideas and insights that he said he often felt like a man on a battlefield, moving ahead and leaving fallen comrades behind.”[39]
The formulation that Johnston is referring to when he notes that Jung “forged ahead with his ideas and insights” is the following passage from Psychological Types §669:
“For all the types met with in practice, the rule holds good that besides the unconscious, primary function there is a relatively unconscious, auxiliary function which is in every respect different from the nature of the primary function. The resulting combinations present the familiar picture of, for instance, practical thinking allied with sensation, speculative thinking forging ahead with intuition, artistic intuition selecting and presenting its images with the help of feeling-values, philosophical intuition systematizing its vision into comprehensible thought by means of a powerful intellect, and so on.”[40]
So regarding this last point of Johnston’s – that Jung is a Ti-Ni type because of his “speculative thinking” that “forges ahead with intuition” – we may note that other readers (such as Myers) have interpreted this same passage in Psychological Types to mean something quite different from what Johnston takes it to mean: If one employs the standard model of types, “speculative thinking forging ahead with intuition” could just as easily be taken to mean a synthesis of Ti-Ne as it could be taken to refer to a synthesis of Ti and Ni.
In fact, given the nature of Ne, Jung’s profession to “feel like a man on a battlefield, moving ahead and leaving his fallen comrades (i.e. ideas) behind”[41] could more easily be taken to refer to Ne than to Ni. Indeed, as Jung says of the Ne type: “If only he could stay put, he would reap the fruits of his labors; but always he must be running after a new possibility, quitting his newly planted fields while others gather in the harvest.”[42]
Finally, one last passage needs to be reproduced from Johnston’s book. In his depiction of the Si types, Johnston observes the following:
“[In describing introverted sensation we] could look to the lives of many writers and artists, discovering those people who seem to artistically translate objective experience … to illustrate this mode of consciousness. … Jung himself, as evidenced by the imagery of The Red Book, might well illustrate this type of consciousness. He could have been one of the century’s great artists, had he not been committed to the emerging field of psychiatry.”[43]
Here, Johnston is evoking Jung’s own description of the introverted sensation types as artists, as featured in Psychological Types §647. Jung uses the example of an artist to illustrate the peculiar and highly elusive nature of the Si function. But in linking the artistic mode of consciousness so emphatically with the Si function, Johnston appears to be missing Jung’s statement from Psychological Types §650 that the Si type who is an artist is the exception, not the rule. At any rate, Johnston is not so much calling Jung an Si type as he is using Jung’s artwork as an example of the Si type of consciousness.
Douglass J. Wilde (2011): Jung’s Personality Theory Quantified
In one of the more psychometric (as opposed to philosophical or speculative) books on Jungian typology to come out in recent years, Douglass J. Wilde refers to Jung’s type as follows:
“Jung described his own type as ‘introverted intuition with thinking.'”[44]
However, this is not quite true. Jung always said that he identified himself as an introverted Thinking type with either Sensation (1925) or Intuition (1959). It is remotely possible to twist a solitary instance of Jung identifying himself as an intuitive dominant type out of the Notes to the Seminar of 1925, but one would have to commit a very violent interpretation of the text in order to make the shoe fit the foot of the princess. Likewise, other interpreters of the Notes to the Seminar of 1925, including its editor Sonu Shamdasani and V. Walter Odajnyk do not agree with Beebe’s interpretation.[45]
One wonders if Wilde’s assessment of Jung’s type is perhaps not influenced by Beebe’s reading, and indeed, Wilde’s reason for putting this statement in his book was that he took it on good faith from Beebe that Jung identified as “introverted intuition with thinking.”[46] Yet given that this is the case, one wonders all the more, then, why Wilde would then choose to include the following statement in his book:
“[Jung’s] quiet, scholarly demeanor would read as Introversion and Thinking, while his powerful imagination would point to iNtuition as the dominant function. Putting them together would indicate introverted intuition (Imagination) with Thinking auxiliary … No further information would appear to be needed for elementary psychoanalytic purposes.”[47]
So besides being under the impression that Jung had identified himself as an introverted intuitive type, an opinion handed down to Wilde from Beebe, we may also conclude that in Wilde’s opinion, the biographical data on Jung’s life and work seems to fit the evidence of Jung as an introverted intuitive type with thinking as the auxiliary function. Which, as we have already seen, is a popular view amongst the people have studied Jung. Certainly, no one could deny that Jung had a powerful imagination of the sort that is commonly associated with introverted intuition.[48]
However, could people not plausibly deny that a “quiet and scholarly demeanor” is always the hallmark of thinking? As far as my own experience is concerned, at least, I have identified (and made the acquaintance of) several people with a preference for Feeling over Thinking who have shown nothing but a “quiet and scholarly demeanor.” Likewise, if a reader wanted to resist Wilde’s analysis, the question of whether Jung was really so “quiet and scholarly” is also open to debate. His editor and aide William McGuire has noted Jung’s joy at social interaction. Certainly, Jung had quite a gregarious and empathic social side to his personality, and while many of the accounts that call Jung an extrovert are lacking in analytical merit, there are also some quite meritorious claims in the literature that call into question both Jung’s scholarliness and his quietude.[49]
Finally, Wilde’s closing statement that “no further information would appear to be needed for elementary psychoanalytic purposes” seems an involuntary echo of Jung’s 1959 coy statement that what little he divulged in the Face to Face interview “gives us all the necessary data for diagnosis.” But of course, no discussion of a person’s psychological type is ever totally exhaustive, not even the present one.[50]
Walter Odajnyk (2012): Archetype and Character
In V. Walter Odajnyk’s book Archetype and Character, he proposes a new archetypical typology that is less psychometric and more archetypically charged than the standard Jungian typology. Hence, in citing the passages below, I wish to make it clear that Odajnyk is talking about the standard Jungian typology in all cited passages, as opposed to operating within his own typology, which is the matter that he is mainly concerned with in his book.
With regards to Jung’s typology, Odajnyk finds Jung’s type to be as follows:
“In Psychological Types, Jung comes to terms with his introversion in an analytical and objective way. When he describes the introvert as shy and hesitant in social relations and even fearful and mistrustful of the human world, Jung was speaking of himself. His dominant function was thinking and his portrayal of the introverted thinking type also applies to him.”[51]
Odajnyk thus determines Jung to be a Ti type. But like Jung himself, Odajnyk is of the opinion that a person’s type can change throughout the course of life, and according to Odajnyk, that probably happened to Jung:[52]
“… initially [Jung] was a thinking-intuitive type but in later life he may have privileged intuition over thinking.”[53]
So early in life, Jung was a Ti type with N as his auxiliary function, while later in life, Jung may have changed to be more of an Ni type with T as his auxiliary.[54] As to exactly when Odajnyk deems this change to have taken place we are not told, but we know from the first passage cited above that in Odajnyk’s view Jung was a Ti type at the time that he wrote Psychological Types. Hence we may assume that, in Odajnyk’s view, Jung’s type would have spanned somewhat like this:
- Ti-N-S-Fe Type [to at least 1921]
- Ni-T-F-Se Type [from sometime after 1921]
Now if we assume the standard model of function orders, it will be tempting to flesh out the orientations of all four functions, but as fact would have it, Odajnyk questions whether the functions must always fall according to the standard model of EIEI (for extroverts) and IEIE (for introverts). According to Odajnyk, it is also possible that the order of the functions would be EEII (for extroverts) and IIEE (for introverts), or perhaps even something completely different.[55]
Thus, with regards to Odajnyk’s views, we should refrain from elaborating on Jung’s functions beyond the extrapolations that have been provided above: Jung was a Ti-N-S-Fe type to at least 1921 and may have changed into an Ni-T-F-Se type sometime after 1921. That is the entirety of Odajnyk’s assessment in Archetype and Character.
David Tacey (2012): The Jung Reader
In his selection of Jung’s writings, David Tacey, an Australian professor of arts, recounts the following:
“Jung refers to thinking and feeling as rational functions, and to sensation and intuition as non-rational. Significantly, he defines intuition as ‘perception via the unconscious’ (§951). It is a unique way of seeing which ‘sees through’ to the depths, and which is sometimes dubbed clairvoyance. As an intuitive, Jung spent a lot of time reflecting on the nature and purpose of intuition, which rationalists denigrate as ‘mysticism’ but Jung sought to normalize as an innate human capacity. Intuition does not merely look at an object (sensation), or recognize its meaning (thinking), or establish its value (feeling), but ‘points to possibilities as to whence it came and whither it is going in a given situation’ (§958).”[56]
At first glance there could seem to be an ambiguity at work here: Jung is “an intuitive.” Does that mean that he is an Intuitive type, in the sense defined by Psychological Types? Or does it rather mean that Jung’s Intuition was superior to his Sensation? I have asked David Tacey this question, but he oddly declined to answer.
However, since Tacey is discussing Psychological Types in a work dedicated to Jung and is furthermore critical of the Myers-Briggs, stating that the MBTI’s appropriation of Jung’s typology “has come at a cost,”[57] it would be reasonable to assume that Tacey is here calling Jung an Intuitive type based on Jung’s own typological dichotomies, as found in Psychological Types.[58] The reader can only wonder, then, how Tacey proposes to make sense of Jung’s remarks from Psychological Types §601 wherein Jung identifies as a rational type (i.e. a Thinking or Feeling type) or of Jung’s many remarks throughout his life where he identified as a Ti type. It would seem, then, that Tacey is the last in a long line of writers who simply assume that Jung is an Intuitive type without feeling the need to engage with Jung’s own claims to the contrary.[59] Should that be considered a slight, it is certainly an excusable one. As we have seen, the claim that Jung either was an Intuitive type, or identified as such, is so widespread that it has long since taken on a life of its own, regardless of the fact that Jung always claimed the contrary.
Acknowledgements
While all errors are of course my own, I am indebted to Vicky Jo Warner, Sigurd Arild, Peter Geyer, Sonu Shamdasani, V. Walter Odajnyk, Richard Noll, Eva Gregersen, and John Beebe for their help in supplying me with references and material for use in this overview and for answering questions about their writings via email. That is, however, not to say that they agree with my expositions – they probably do not.
References
Berecz: Theories of Personality Pearson 2008
Casement: Carl Gustav Jung SAGE Publications 2001
Cope: Fear of Jung Karnac Books 2006
Farrell: The Millionaire Code Wiley 2007
Giannini: Compass of the Soul Center for Applications of Psychological Type 2004
Huskinson: Nietzsche and Jung Routledge 2004
Jansen: Jung’s Apprentice Daimon 2003
Jacobi: The Psychology of C.G. Jung Routledge & Kegan Paul 1969
Johnston: Jung’s Compass of Psychological Types CreateSpace 2011
Jung: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra Princeton University Press 1988
Jung: Psychological Types Princeton University Press 1990
Jung: The Tavistock Lectures Pantheon 1968
Kaufmann: Discovering the Mind: Freud, Adler, and Jung Transaction Publishers 1992
Lewin: Jung on War, Politics, and Nazi Germany Karnac Books 2009
McLynn: Jung Black Swan 1997
McGuire & Hull: C.G. Jung Speaking Princeton University Press 1987
Shamdasani: C.G. Jung – A Biography in Books W. W. Norton & Company 2011
Shamdasani: Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology Cambridge University Press 2003
Smith: The Wounded Jung Northwestern University Press 1996
Stern: C.G. Jung – The Haunted Prophet George Braziller 1976
Odajnyk: Archetype and Character Palgrave Macmillan 2012
Tacey: How to Read Jung Granta Books 2006
Tacey: The Jung Reader Routledge 2012
Wilde: Jung’s Personality Theory Quantified Springer 2011
Notes
[1] Casement: Carl Gustav Jung p. 6
[2] Jansen: Jung’s Apprentice p. 146
[3] Jung: Psychological Types §615
[4] Jung: Psychological Types §639
[5] Jung: Psychological Types §659
[6] Farrell: The Millionaire Code p. 97
[7] Shamdasani: Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology p. 23
[8] Giannini: Compass of the Soul pp. 29-30
[9] Giannini: Personal correspondence, 2013
[10] Huskinson: Nietzsche and Jung pp. 147-148
[11] Huskinson: Nietzsche and Jung p. 262n26
[12] Jung: Psychological Types §242
[13] Jung: Psychological Types §540
[14] If one wanted to go further and use the axiom of function ordering that Jung proposes in Psychological Types §637, one could even say that Jung assesses Nietzsche to be an Ni-Te-Fe-Se type. But I am not sure that this was Jung’s intended meaning here.
[15] Jung: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, p. 1043
[16] Jung: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, p. 1082
[17] Jung: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, p. 145
[18] Jung: Psychological Types §568-576
[19] Huskinson: Nietzsche and Jung p. 200n28
[20] Cope: Fear of Jung pp. 141-142
[21] Jung: Psychological Types §659
[22] Berecz: Theories of Personality p. 509
[23] Berecz: Theories of Personality p. 507
[24] Jung: Psychological Types §665
[25] Jung: Psychological Types §613
[26] Jung: Psychological Types §615
[27] Jung: The Tavistock Lectures, Lecture 1 §25
[28] Lewin: Jung on War, Politics, and Nazi Germany p. 68
[29] Lewin: Jung on War, Politics, and Nazi Germany p. 105
[30] Lewin: Jung on War, Politics, and Nazi Germany p. 70
[31] Jung: Psychological Types §658
[32] Jung: Psychological Types §659
[33] Johnston: Jung’s Compass of Psychological Types p. 5
[34] Johnston: Jung’s Compass of Psychological Types p. 34
[35] Johnston: Jung’s Compass of Psychological Types p. 57
[36] Unless Johnston proposes to call both of the two lowermost functions “the shadow type,” which is possible, as Johnston does indeed refer to his own shadow in quite broad terms (e.g. p. 263). But even so, all else being equal and going by Johnston’s own standard, it would be strange for Johnston to refer solely to Fe as Jung’s shadow type, and not also to Se as Jung’s “shadow type,” if one was of the opinion that Jung’s Se was more repressed than his Fe.
[37] Johnston: Jung’s Compass of Psychological Types p. 126
[38] Johnston: Jung’s Compass of Psychological Types p. 150
[39] Johnston: Jung’s Compass of Psychological Types pp. 146-147
[40] Jung: Psychological Types §669
[41] Johnston: Jung’s Compass of Psychological Types p. 143
[42] Jung: Psychological Types §615
[43] Johnston: Jung’s Compass of Psychological Types p. 114
[44] Wilde: Jung’s Personality Theory Quantified p. 11
[45] Shamdasani: Personal correspondence, 2013, cf. Shamdasani: C.G. Jung – A Biography in Books p. 77 and Odajnyk: Archetype and Character p. 227n9
[46] Wilde: Personal correspondence, 2013
[47] Wilde: Jung’s Personality Theory Quantified pp. 11-12
[48] Although some would deny that intuition is linked with imagination, e.g. Jacobi: The Psychology of C.G. Jung p. 24
[49] E.g. McLynn: Jung p. 312, Kaufmann: Discovering the Mind: Freud, Adler, and Jung p. 448, Stern: C.G. Jung – The Haunted Prophet p. 224, 242n2, Smith: The Wounded Jung p. 156
[50] Jung, in McGuire & Hull: C.G. Jung Speaking p. 435-6
[51] Odajnyk: Archetype and Character p. 145
[52] Jung, in McGuire & Hull: C.G. Jung Speaking p. 435
[53] Odajnyk: Archetype and Character p. 207
[54] There is nothing to suggest that Odajnyk ever considered Jung an extrovert, and hence we can take the liberty of assuming that Odajnyk means Ni when he says that Jung may have been an intuitive dominant type.
[55] Odajnyk: Archetype and Character p. 230n1
[56] Tacey: The Jung Reader p. 296
[57] Tacey: The Jung Reader p. 296
[58] Tacey: The Jung Reader p. 296
[59] Thus Tacey also says without argument that “to think like Jung requires effort and education, unless one is by nature an introverted intuitive, and then thinking like Jung is quite normal” in his ‘How to Read Jung’ from 2006, p. 13.