Latest Articles
America’s Addiction Epidemic
Kerri Homerick
January 21, 2026
The mainstream attitude that equates addiction with criminality tends to overlook some of the more foundational and influential components of addiction, those related to individual and cultural wounding. Those who turn to substances do so to fill a void—to bridge the vast expanse that they experience between disparate parts of themselves, and between themselves and the world.
Artificial Intelligence
Satish Kappagantula
October 7, 2025
As a species, we have been invoking the machine for centuries. The machine has become an archetype, evolving in its shape and form over the generations. One only needs to think of the massive data centers already in place today with thousands of computing elements in operation for AI training and generation. Jung (1984) reminded us that these vast machines are the dragons of our day.
The Deep Well
Rachel McKamey
June 9, 2025
I was so outwardly focused on my own anticipation and expectation of others that I dampened the voice from within so that it was barely a whisper with no sense of agency. I was quite adept at anticipating and meeting others’ needs and normalizing them over my own. I accepted things I should not have and lived without a sense of inner comfort or safe harbor, instead choosing to embark on boats where other people were at the helm.
From the Archives
Plagiarism and Personality?
Mark & Carol The Editors
September 5, 2012
How might type development affect judgment lapses that result in plagiarism? Can we use our understanding of type to address this problem? Two high-profile journalists were recently removed from their posts for reasons of plagiarism—New Yorker staff writer Jonah Lehrer, and Time editor-at-large and CNN host Fareed Zakaria. On July 30, Lehrer …
Egosyntonic and Egodystonic
Mark Hunziker
June 5, 2013
Our often-used shorthand illustration with a line drawn between the four allegedly conscious function-attitudes and the four “unconscious” ones is misleading because consciousness is not a sufficiently reliable characteristic for distinguishing these two sides of the psyche’s typology. It’s related to what distinguishes them, but only as a secondary and fairly unpredictable characteristic.
Conversations with Satan
Walter Smith
January 4, 2017
What is evil? We know it when we see it. Evil is subjective; it often depends on our point of view. For example, when the two women asked if they could tell me what I did wrong, I had a choice; I could either see their offer as helpful or “evil” in the sense that they were out to destroy my work. Can we utilize the power of psychological type to better understand what evil is?
Type, Psychoanalysis & Meditation
Polly Young-Eisendrath
November 15, 2010
…how do we get a “spaciousness” in our own responses so that we can experience our feelings, our thoughts, our motivations without acting on them directly—but without denying them either. This is not a matter of suppressing, dissociating, trying to override one’s negative experience; it’s not a matter of controlling; it’s not a matter of pushing anything aside. It’s a matter of being able to watch what is going on in our own experience…
Saving Sheila, Part II
Sheila Newsom
November 13, 2022
I now better understand the odds against all of this: a male, Caucasian physician, living in the firm grasp of an ESTJ cultural weltanschauung awakens to the soul’s desperate pleading late in life. That the soul seeks to live forward something alien, foreign, and predictably destructive is now so comprehensible. Nothing heroic is here, merely a journey of survival.
Migrating Identities
Abby Chow
October 4, 2017
For intuitives, change can be a thrilling undertaking. A preference for sensing, by contrast, tends to be associated with a step-by-step process to change that is anchored in what is known, as well as what is necessary and practical. If acculturation is viewed as a process of change, intuitive individuals possess a greater propensity for reconciling different cultural identities.
So Texas Walks Into a Bar …
Elizabeth Martin
April 5, 2017
With his unique thundering velvet hand approach, a Texan rarely says, “Shut up!” or “Don’t do that!” Instead, we hear, “Hush,” or “That would be ill-advised,” with a long drawl and a grin. The result is effective and charming, binding the man to his community. He easily compensates in robust, creative, and powerful ways to ensure full balance in his personality expression.
Ambiversion: Ideal or Myth?
Carol Shumate
July 1, 2015
“Ambiversion” —the equal development of extraversion and introversion in an individual— has become a popular notion of late but it has led to some misinterpretations of Jung’s typology, specifically, to an idealization of this in-between state…