It can’t be emphasized enough that Jung believed his psychological types should not be used to classify people. Instead the types were to be used for “sorting out the empirical material” that comes up during psychoanalysis. This helps a patient see where a complex lives in his psyche.
Both John Beebe, in Energies and Patterns of Psychological Type, and Marie-Louise von Franz, in Lectures on Psychological Type, write about the importance of dreams when working with type.
Von Franz said that in dreams the inferior function represents itself as a figure of the opposite sex or sometimes as an animal or stone age figure. Beebe says that in dreams “the auxiliary function is carried by a stable parental figure (usually a father in a man and a mother in a woman) and the tertiary function by an unstable child figure who is given to cycles of inflation and deflation.”
Beebe, who has an ENTP personality type, said that he had a dream of a Chinese laundress, who represented his inferior (anima) introverted sensation, and her neglectful gambling husband, who represented his dominant (hero) extroverted intuition. This dream was pivotal for him in determining that his type is ENTP.
Piecing together your type with dreams:
Beebe’s describes a dream he had that validated his auxiliary (parent) and tertiary (child) function. The dream was of a father chasing his 20something son around a dining room table waving a butcher knife. The butcher knife represented the introverted thinking function and the son the extroverted feeling function. “Chastened by the dream, I gradually became less aggressive about applying overriding thinking formulations to the understanding and dismissal of my feeling when it was upset.” He also says his relation to feeling-type patients and friends also got kinder.
Here are client dreams that Von Franz described in Lectures on Psychological Type:
A man with inferior feeling had several dreams of collecting rare mountain flowers. Afterwards the man ended up getting stuck in a concrete interpretation of the dream. He made friends with a botanist and spent his holidays collecting mountain flowers. “The superior function, like an eagle seizing a mouse, tries to get hold of the inferior function and bring it over to its own realm.”
An extroverted sensation type neglected his inferior introverted intuition to the extent that he had a recurring dream of poor people and laborers who broke into his house at night. He was a politician and was terrified by the dream, so he started telling friends that the communists would win out. This was a wrong kind of introverted intuition based on projection.
A woman with dominant (hero) extroverted feeling had a dream about establishing a bird observation station. Von Franz advised her that she should try to be aware of her autonomous thoughts, because in a feeling type, inferior introverted thinking thoughts operate like birds, landing and flying off again. She did this by carrying a notebook with her and jotted down sudden thoughts. The first thought she jotted down was so jarring she didn’t write down any others at first: “If my son-in-law died my daughter would come back home.” But by capturing thoughts like that they are deprived of any destructive effect.
An extroverted intuitive type had a recurring dream of a dirty, bad-tempered tramp, representing the man’s neglected inferior introverted sensation. Von Franz told him to talk to the tramp in active imagination. The tramp said he was responsible for the physical symptoms that had brought the man to analysis because the tramp did not get enough attention. The tramp told him to dress in tramp clothes and go for a walk in the country with him once a week and pay attention to what he had to say. Von Franz told him to follow the tramp’s advice. It ended up putting him in touch with nature, flowers, the sunrise. His symptoms disappeared and he eventually bought a farm. This dream shows how the inferior function is the door to experience the deeper layers of the unconscious.
My personality type is INFJ and recently I had a dream about Donald Trump, who is widely considered to have an ESTP personality type. It was apparent to me he represented my inferior extroverted sensation. He was in my living room even though there was a gathering for him in my backyard. I attempted several times to take a selfie with him so I could show my grandchildren someday that I met the president, but the selfies didn’t work. This points to difficulties in accessing my inferior extroverted sensation.
If you are unsure what your personality type is, start by trying to determine your inferior function. This isn’t too hard to identity as it presents as “life’s great problem,” according to von Franz. Your dream figures will show you what your inferior function is and how to better access it.
