For greater depth of understanding about personality type, there is nothing better than returning to the source, Carl Jung. In the book C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, there is a section from pages 304-314 where an interviewer asks him about type.

Of particular note is what Jung said about introverted intuitive types (what today we would call INTJ and INFJ):

So you see, if the introverted intuitive were to speak of what he really perceives, practically no one would understand him. They learn to keep things to themselves, and you hardly ever hear them talking of these things. That is a great disadvantage, but it is an enormous advantage in another way, not to speak of the experiences they have in that respect and also in their human relations.

For instance, they come into the presence of somebody they don’t know, and suddenly they have inner images, and these images give them more or less complete information about the psychology of the partner.

It can also happen that they come into the presence of somebody they don’t know at all, not from Adam, and they know an important piece out of the biography of that person, and are not aware of it, and they tell the story, and then the fat is in the fire.

So the introverted intuitive has in a way a very difficult life, although one of the most interesting lives, but it is often difficult to get into their confidence. [emphasis mine]

C.G Jung Speaking, p. 311

In this section of the book Jung also tells a funny story about an intuitive type, where the woman noticed through intuition that Jung had seen a male patient earlier than morning, even though she was completely oblivious to the physical clue of a half-smoked cigar right in front of her. This prompted Jung to say:

The intuitive is a type that doesn’t see, doesn’t see the stumbling block before his feet, but he smells a rat for ten miles.

C.G. Jung Speaking p. 309

If your type is introverted intuitive, I’d love to hear if the above insights from Jung resonate with you. Instagram is a good place to message me.

We suffer more in imagination than we do in reality, the Stoic philosopher Seneca said.

For all the talk out there about how sensation types and intuitive types differ, I think they both struggle equally with suffering in imagination.

By sensation types I am speaking broadly of the four types that have dominant sensation: ISFJ, ISTJ, ESTP, and ESFP. Intuition is their inferior (weakest) function, especially when the person is younger or overwhelmed by life circumstances at a given time.

People who have a tendency towards having a sensation type (most of us are not a pure type) can have difficulty seeing into the future and predicting the outcome of an action. They struggle to see beyond what is in front of them. Therefore their vision of what the outcome of a decision or situation might be can be inaccurate and trigger unnecessary anxiety.

The four dominant intuitive types are: INFJ, INTJ, ENTP and ENFP. Intuition is their dominant (strongest) function. More often than not, people who have a tendency towards having an intuitive type are correct in connecting the dots and gauging the outcome of a decision or situation. This can cause anxiety as well.

Both sensation and intuitive types need to develop practices to help them face situations with equanimity. Above all, sensation and intuitive types should rely on each other’s strengths in order to better face reality and minimize suffering in imagination.

I love the term “centroversion,” which I discovered when reading Steve Myers’ book:

Another associate of Jung, Erich Neumann, describes this new attitude as the personality embarking on a third direction, which is neither extraversion nor introversion but ‘centroversion.’ This is his own term for a new direction that is equivalent to individuation.

Myers-Briggs Typology vs Jungian Individuation: Overcoming One-Sidedness in Self and Society by Steve Myers p. 118

Our personality type makes us aware of how we are one-sided. In Jungian typology, the goal is to use our type as a stepping stone to individuation where we transcend our type and leave it behind. Myers says that “individuation begins only when we try to differentiate the inferior function.” When we give the inferior “full parity with the dominant” our consciousness collapses into the unconscious. We lose the certainties we used to have about life and confront the contents of our psyche. Marie-Louise von Franz describes it as follows:

When the fourth function comes up … the whole [conscious] structure collapses … This, then, produces a stage … where everything is neither thinking nor feeling nor sensation nor intuition. Something new comes up, namely, a completely different and new attitude towards life in which one uses all and none of the function all the time.

Lectures on Jung’s Typology by Marie-Louise von Franz and James Hillman p. 27-28

Ideally, the older we get, the more we should NOT fit the personality type of our younger years. We should become less one-sided. Myers conducted research for his PhD that involved gathering data on typological one-sidedness by country through an online self-report questionnaire. The results show that, both in the East and in the West, one-sideness actually increases with age. In my next post I’ll take a look at ways we can avoid becoming increasingly one-sided as we age.