Articles documenting how C.G. Jung identified various people as more than one type are becoming something of a theme for us here at CelebrityTypes (Jung on Freud, Jung on Adler, Jung on his own type.)
We don’t by any means blame Jung – we correct and update our own assessments quite incurably ourselves, and besides, Jung did not deny that type could change through life. But in the case of Nietzsche, we get an especially grave instance of “dual typing” – because here we get dual typing within the same book!
The case for Nietzsche as IN-J:
(Psychological Types §242): 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 is IN-J.
But then we get Jung’s case for Nietzsche as I-TP:
(Psychological Types §632): 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 Darwin and Cuvier are E-TJs and Kant and Nietzsche are I-TPs.
***
Above, Jung said of Nietzsche that “his lack of rational moderation and conciseness argues for the intuitive type.” Well, said somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Jung’s promiscuous dual typing of Nietzsche within the same book conveys a “lack of rational moderation and conciseness” that argues for Jung himself being an intuitive type. :-)
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16 years later: The case for INTJ:
In 1937, 16 years after the publication of Psychological Types, Jung said the following of Nietzsche’s type:
“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.” (Jung: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, vol. I p. 1043)
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 that which is in opposition to the things below, namely the other three functions.” (Jung: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, vol. I p. 1082)
So strictly speaking, Jung has said that Nietzsche is an Intuitive dominant type with auxiliary thinking, but not whether he now considers Nietzsche an introvert or an extrovert. But not to despair, for in volume II of the same work, we get 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.” (Jung: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, vol. II p. 145)
So alas – if Nietzsche’s unconscious is extroverted, then by implication of the enantiodromia that fuels Jung’s thinking on typology, Nietzsche’s superior function must be introverted. In 1937, Jung would therefore consider Nietzsche an INTJ.
***
Update: Bonus Quote: Nietzsche as an Intuitive Dominant Type:
“Nietzsche as an intuitive simply touches upon a thing and off he goes. He does not dwell upon the subject, though in the long run one can say that he really does dwell upon it by amplification. But he doesn’t deal with things in a logical way, going into the intellectual process of elucidation; he just catches such an intuition on the wing and leaves it, going round and round amplifying, so that in the end we get a complete picture, but by intuitive means, not by logical means.” – Jung: Seminar on Zarathustra (1934-39) vol. II p. 1083
Update II: Nietzsche as an Ni-Ti Type
Though Jung never commits entirely to any specific function model in Psychological Types, a closer reading of the passage on Nietzsche’s type in Chapter 3 would nevertheless seem to suggest that Jung thought Nietzsche an Ni-Ti-Fe-Se type:
“The fact that it is just the psychological functions of intuition on the one hand, and of sensation and instinct on the other, that Nietzsche brings into relief, must be characteristic of his own personal psychology. He must surely be reckoned as an intuitive type with an inclination towards the side of introversion. As evidence of the former we have his pre-eminently intuitive, artistic manner of production, of which this very work The Birth of Tragedy is highly characteristic, while his master work Thus Spake Zarathustra is even more so. His aphoristic writings are expressive of his introverted intellectual side. These, in spite of a strong admixture of feeling, exhibit a pronounced critical intellectualism in the manner of the French intellectuals of the eighteenth century.”
The implication being here that Jung often uses the term “intellect” as a synonym for Thinking in Psychological Types.
One might therefore conclude that Jung saw Nietzsche as a type that has no equivalent with regard to the modern-day arrangement of the functions. However, the matter is not nearly so clear-cut: As we saw above, Chapter 10 of Psychological Types still gives a example of Nietzsche as a Ti type in a context where he is speaking of “the normal types.” So no matter how one frames it, it seems that Jung held more than one opinion of Nietzsche’s type throughout his life.
Ever since I read it, I also have been confused by that. I hold on to the possibility that at the point, in the Introverted Thinking type section, Jung might have been talking about a distinction between the extraverted type in general and the introverted type in general and then mixed them up. Especially when you consider this:
“Should he become neurotic, it is the sign of a more or less complete unconscious identity of the ego with the Self, whereupon the importance of the Self is reduced to nil, while the ego becomes inflated beyond reason …
“Every psychology which reduces the nature of man to unconscious power instinct springs from this foundation. For example, Nietzsche’s many faults in taste owe their existence to this subjectification of consciousness.”
– Psychological Types, The Introverted Type, General Attitude of Consciousness; 1923 (sorry I can’t be more specific with the location)
“The subject’s freedom of mind is chained to an ignominious financial dependence, his unconcernedness of action suffers now and again, a distressing collapse in the face of public opinion, his moral superiority gets swamped in inferior relationships, and his desire to dominate ends in a pitiful craving to be loved.” – Psychological Types, The Introverted Type, The Unconscious Attitude; 1923
Tongue-in-cheek: perhaps, they were scattered in notebooks and as he put them together more “coherently”, he messed them up.
Good answer. We think, actually, that your tongue-in-cheek is probably correct in gist. (There was no handwritten manuscript of P.T. so it’s not correct in detail.) But Jung would often contradict himself and be very promiscuous with his definitions. The possibility that you allow Jung is certainly a generous one, as a Darwin-Cuvier axis can hardly pertain to the extroverted type in general. The Kant-Nietzsche axis is more contentious, but we would posit that Jung misunderstood or used both Kant and Nietzsche in highly idiosyncratic ways – ways that actually suggest that they would be concerned with the same type of “knowledge” in Jung’s eyes, namely that of archetypes. With Kant, Jung considered his categories to be archetypes (!) and with Nietzsche, it is widely known how Jung placed his reading of Nietzsche on Zarathustra, perceiving it as the activity of an archetype in Nietzsche. Thus it would seem that if one adopts such idiosyncratic Jungian readings of Kant and Nietzsche, they are actually both engaged in the same type of philosophical activity, namely the exploration of archetypes through either study (Kant) or manifestation (Nietzsche).
Also, for what it’s worth, the Princeton philosopher Walter Kaufmann, who read P.T. in the German, also took the passage to mean that Jung identifies Nietzsche as an Introverted Thinking type. As he writes: “[In Psychological Types] Kant and Nietzsche turn out to be the same type … the introverted thinking type … introduced as such in the first paragraph under this heading.” Kaufmann, Discovering the Mind, vol. III P. 309
No, a Darwin-Cuvier axis can hardly pertain to an extraverted type in general. The part about Cuvier and Nietzsche is where this might pertain.
I have a strong belief that of all the celebrities, Kant is the easiest to type. The preference for introverted thinking is just too strong to be missed.
Kaufmann was too superficial in his evaluation if I were to judge based on this quote only (haven’t read him).
“namely the exploration of archetypes through … manifestation (Nietzsche)”
Ni as the incarnation of an archetype. That’s an important point.
“Ni as the incarnation of an archetype.” Where is this from? I think Ni, in orthodox Jungian terms, is unconscious perception. A road to the perception of archetypes, not an archetype in itself.
If Nietzsche shows signs of Ti but not of Te and is Ni dominant, doesn’t it make sense for him to be an INFJ with a strong tertiary function?
Sure. If he is classified as Ni dominant who uses Ti, and auxiliary thinking, basically Jung is saying Nietzsche is:
1 Ni
2 Ti
3 Fe
4 Se
Of course I know this, but when you write “The implication being here that Jung often uses the term “intellect” as a synonym for Feeling in Psychological Types.” for the benefit of the readers, I thought it might be worth pointing out you probably mean Thinking instead of Feeling here.
As for this point:
” As we saw above, Chapter 10 of Psychological Types still gives a example of Nietzsche as a Ti type in a context where he is speaking of “the normal types.” So no matter how one frames it, it seems that Jung held more than one opinion of Nietzsche’s type throughout his life.”
There is no question Jung is maddeningly confusing here. From other contexts though, I think what’s likely going on there is that Jung/von Franz often were a bit loose on the whole dom/inf thing, and at times essentially treated type as if there are two superior/two inferior functions (rather than dom-inf and aux-tert).
For instance, in one book (which I sadly forget), von Franz refers to Jung as a thinking type with no qualification, whereas she refers to Jung as an intuitive dominant in her famous essay on the inferior. I’m inclined to think it was somewhat acceptable practice to refer to, say, someone with sensation auxiliary, loosely as a sensation type.
Of course, again maddeningly, if we want to nitpick that language/wording, when Jung talks of Schiller’s type, he pointedly remarks against concluding that Schiller belongs to the intuitive type, despite his strong intuitive leanings, and instead is a thinking type. One would have to assume Schiller had thinking dominant and intuition auxiliary from that discussion in P.T.
Thinking/Feeling typo is now fixed. Thanks for pointing it out!
The things about Jung and Jungians (but not van der Hoop) using vague terminology we seem to have covered already. Von Franz also has her interview where she is very vague again. If you ever stumble upon the von Franz book where she calls Jung a thinking type, we’d be interested. But we don’t expect you to go look it up for our sake.
On Schiller’s type, Jung says Ti-N as far as we understand it. In P.T. Schiller is Ti-N and in a private letter to Spielrein (1919), Jung says Schiller is an Ni-dominant: https://www.idrlabs.com/articles/2013/01/jungs-typings-to-sabina-spielrein/
Sure, I wish I had that quote handy. It was where she mentioned he’s a thinking type, in reference to his desire to make scientific contributions. Basically one of those cases where, vagueness notwithstanding, one might posit a “most likely” interpretation – my interpretation being that the Psychological Types typing wasn’t quite a dual typing so much as one of these various littered cases where it was apparently acceptable to refer to someone as a type X even if X was the secondary, not the dominant.
You may be right, but “an even sharper contrast” in the “case of the normal type” – like Socrates, who repressed intuition “as far as possible,” Jung is not merely being vague; his phrasings are actively misleading to the reader (even if not intentionally so). There was an American Harvard psychologist (Henry Murray) who knew Jung personally, and who theorized that Jung’s absurd writing and speaking style was due to latent schizophrenia.
So the context there makes me think that Jung is probably suggesting Nietzsche’s more extreme in embodying ***introverted*** thinking as contrasted with extraverted thinking than Kant is in the Kant-Darwin pair.
As opposed to, say, suggesting Nietzsche is more of a thinking type (as opposed to any of the other function types – sensation-type, intuitive-type, or feeling-type) than Kant is.
Now, the only reason I even bother with this kind of fishing out of plausible coherency (amidst what I agree is absurdly misleading writing) is I do think it gives a snapshot into how Jung thought about types at least at a given time…but as his history shows, he wasn’t above wildly changing his type diagnoses without suitable explanation to the public. To this day, I don’t know how his sensation went from superior to inferior (in his mind).
As possibly clarifying that remark of mine, this makes the most sense if one views introverted thinking not as one function, but as a function (thinking by itself) expressed in a certain style (the introverted one) – then, one sees Nietzsche as typifying the features of the introverted style of thinking which are peculiar to that style.
Or possibly he did not wish to insult Nietzsche’s masculinity by typing him Ni Fe Ti Se. This makes more sense allowing for a relatively well used Ti, like Steve Job’s well utilized Ni. His Fe passion is evident enough, just expressed in more acceptably masculine ways.
I don’t think that first quote necessarily means what you infer.
” He must surely be reckoned an intuitive with leanings towards introversion. …”
It may just mean that overall he tended toward introversion, i.e., IN**.
By the way, I love your site and your analyses.
Well, Jung allowed for the possibility of having more than 1 developed auxiliary, with the second one (which we call the tertiary if subscribing to MBTI) more unconscious than the first one.
Yet, he typed Nietzsche’s feeling and sensation both as inferior, and diagnosed Nietzsche as both introverted thinking type and with intuition ranking above thinking. Thus, his feeling is extraverted, mainly because it is associated to the unconscious.
Jung’s overall view was the attitude of consciousness is one thing, and the attitude of the unconscious is the opposite. He viewed the auxiliary as relatively unconscious. Thus, there is no definitive vview on its attitude – but there is a conditional view, namely that if it is very developed and conscious, it is probably introverted in an introvert, and otherwise it is extraverted in an introvert. In other words, Jung didn’t associate attitudes to functions so much as attitudes to people’s consciousness (and of course, since the dominant function in his view is an absolute representative of the ego’s aims, the dominant function takes on the attitude of consciousness, giving rise to his Fe, Fi, Se, Si, Ne, etc portraits).
This is why, when people ask for the attitude of the auxiliary, I like to say what attitude of auxiliary? The auxiliary is subordinate to either the dominant or inferior or both (it is “relatively” unconscious) – in Jung’s original portrayal, the attitude belongs to conscious/unconscious.
I think though that depending on WHAT we’re modeling, it’s reasonable to adopt different paradigms… the focus of Myers was undoubtedly more on the conscious compared to Jung’s, which was decidedly more unconscious-focused than Myers. When Jung might say someone’s feeling is extraverted, due to being an introverted thinking type, it might not refer to something very empirically obvious, or to the portion of feeling which *is* conscious (since realistically, only in extreme types is the inferior pretty much totally unconscious, e.g. woman with snake in her abdomen). Beebe’s/sorta MBTI’s model of the ego functions focuses on describing 16 types with *four* ego functions. Since the unconscious is kind of a black box to people like me, I do sympathize with alternate models that aim to be more balanced in portraying the conscious personality, instead of the squarely 2-conscious/2-unconscious models that kind of lose half the functions to someone who cannot read dreams and such things.
A little clarifying remark is that Jung *DID* think there’s such a thing as the typical process called introverted thinking, or extraverted intuition, or whatever, but to my knowledge, the only way he ever wrote of these processes becoming *typical*/habituated in a person is through the attitude of consciousness and unconsciousness being either introverted/extraverted + the adoption of a dominant function. In other words, I do think he thought the processes are essentially distinct, so distinct as to be called separate, but that’s more or less a corollary of the fact that extraversion to an introverted sensation type is associated with the unconscious… making the process of introverted sensation steeply contrasted with extraverted sensation. Now, as I have said of course, we now can talk of these processes independently, and there is some truth to this, because most modern research reveals personalities are much more jumbled than clearly polarized, and even Jung wrote that the relatively balanced middle group is very large (people neither significantly E nor I in orientation). So this is probably the main reason behind the attractiveness, for those who want to thoroughly model the conscious personality, of the E/I/E/I patterns to place an attitude besides each function — more or less because there is no sharp conscious/unconscious = E/I divide.
Much of what you say is covered from another angle in this article: https://www.idrlabs.com/articles/2015/06/function-models-for-skeptics-part-1/
I’m not quite sure what I should reply to. Are there any specific questions? Anyway, what you say is true concerning Psychological Types, but Jung says more about typology in later writings. It’s true that he doesn’t play around with function arrangements as much later theorists, but there’s really nothing in his writings to discourage or contradict that development. I also think it’s clear from P.T. that the 4th inferior function will be the opposite of the dominant, e.g. Fe-Ti and so on.
For what it’s worth, I was responding over to that old post by Andria, basically regarding the whole “what if extraverted feeling is a developed auxiliary” thing for Nietzsche.
Although, I suppose one question comes to mind now you mention it – what do you refer to when you say “Jung says more about typology in later writings”?
My impression has always been that even in the later days, e.g. including von Franz’s accounts, the trend is very similar, namely that introvert/extravert still pretty much belongs to the conscious/unconscious divide.
And this loose trend of referring to someone as type X where X could either be the dominant or auxiliary also continues. If we think about it, if we assume we know someone is an introvert, an intuitive type, and a thinking type, and that says most everything about them, I doubt this speaks for the tendency to differentiate two versions: a TiNe and a NiTe.
That isn’t to say I haven’t found truth to the newer models, albeit I find if you want raw fact, none of the models is as correct as just defining and directly recording every instance of a function-attitude with no assumptions. However, to capture specific kinds of interesting dynamics, one can make a model.
The best example I can think of to illustrate my point on later-Jung/vonFranz’s views here is that von Franz seemed to think Jung and she were the same type, yet she seemed to illustrate herself as an introverted thinking dom with inferior extraverted feeling, and Jung as introverted intuitive with inferior extraverted sensation.
And I seriously think there’s no question about whether she thought both of them were introverts.
Basically, this strongly suggests that even in the later years, there was no turn to distinguishing between two introverted NT types, and that the perspective was squarely that introversion is an overall attitude of consciousness. I’d say by the more modern viewpoint, which you can see even on one of this site’s pages, the two NTPs are considered more similar than the TiNe and NiTe types — in fact, the sense in which your site calls the two NTPs similar is probably quite similar to the sense in which von Franz called Jung and herself similar/the same type. Pretty sure, like with Nietzsche, they considered themselves intuitive thinkers with a leaning to introversion.
Reference for the article of yours I’m quoting – “Because they have the same cognitive functions in almost the same order, they are basically the same type.”
https://www.idrlabs.com/articles/2013/08/the-difference-between-intp-and-entp/
I’m pretty sure that’s how von Franz saw herself and Jung — except I don’t think she saw either of them as extraverts :-)
Well, as we have previously discussed, both Jung and the Jungians tended to have a colloquial way to express types, as you say. This is the manner indicated by von Franz in ‘Matter of Heart’ and also in ‘Man and His Symbols.’ Yet as late as 1971, von Franz also distinguished clearly between types on the basis of the dominant function in a manner akin to Myers. This leads me to suggest that the more reasonable explanation is that types were often designated in a colloquial manner, but that more precise measurements were available. Van der Hoop knew Jung personally, and he quickly saw the need to distinguish between e.g. N-t and T-n types as well. On the other hand, you are quite correct that many Jungians (although perhaps not Jung himself) saw their differentiated functions as sharing the same orientation, as stated in the article I linked to above.
Well I’d certainly agree that Jung and von Franz were sometimes more specific and sometimes less specific. My suggestion though is both von Franz and your site’s article are more or less saying the same thing — that NT types with the same top two functions are very similar types, and von Franz has said they can be almost indistinguishable but for seeking the inferior function.
However,
Sorry, submitted too soon —
cont’d
However, the difference appears to be that von Franz/Jung consider two introverted NTs similar, whereas I think the viewpoint expressed in the modern theories is that the two NTPs and NTJs are similar.
That’s why I think there’s a pretty good case that Jung still thought introversion/extraversion was mostly a property of the conscious/unconscious divide.
Yes, it’s probably true that von Franz would group them like this:
Ti-N and Ni-T
Ne-T and Te-N
Whereas we’d prefer to group them like this:
Ti-N and Ne-T
Te-N and Ni-T
Yes, exactly what I was getting at.
And my own view is closer at this point to saying that Jung (not orthodox Jungians coming after) did not mark a definite attitude to the aux because he didn’t seem to be a clear proponent of the NeTe NiTi etc view – rather, it seems that a function could be called auxiliary even if greatly/even mostly perhaps unconscious! From Nietzsche’s Zarathustra –
“Now, this was an ideal situation for the constellation of the lower trinity, the trinity of the functions in the unconscious–in the first place sensation,…and the auxiliary functions thinking and feeling, which are both to a great extent also unconscious.”
And just a little earlier for context — “His 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 three other functions, a trinity. He was strictly identical with one function. Sure enough, Nietzsche in the time when he wrote Zarathustra was absolutely identical with intuition, using only that function, to the very exhaustion of his brain.”
Basically, if an auxiliary could be more unconscious than conscious, it wouldn’t make sense (if you’re inclined to think as I do that Jung thought introversion/extraversion is a property of consciousness) to assign it a definite attitude – it depends if it was raised to consciousness or not.
This is also good evidence for Jung thinking the level of consciousness of a function is dynamic. He obviously thought Nietzsche at some point had very conscious thinking, but not apparently at the time of writing Zarathustra.
Jung INTJ is Ti-Ni you troglodyte, imagine pretending to be a typology authority and selling products without knowing you’re thinking in function stacks that weren’t made until 40 years after Psychological Types was published LMFAO, stick to your star wars funny videos and delete this trash scam site
Or maybe he got himself wrong, even in his own system, as Barbara Hannah also pointed out. The vast majority of experts who have written on the topic have pegged him as an Ni dominant type, but as the website notes, he always identified himself as a Ti type.