When you are taking care of others, what function-attitude do you tend to use the most? Where is it in your typology? Have there been times when it has not been effective? Why? How do you, yourself prefer to be taken care of? How does that differ from how you do it for others?
Issues
You can assert yourself … with an introverted function. You can take care of others … with an introverted function. You’re just not likely to do both these things with an introverted function, any more than one would do both with an extraverted function; our alternation of attitudes between the dominant and auxiliary takes care of that.
The blank piece of paper symbolically represents our universe. How we put writing on the paper—how the pen moves across the paper—represents how we see ourselves fitting into life and how we navigate through it. Extraversion is characterized by a tendency toward expansion. There is an emphasis on centrifugal movement (movement away from the body).
But I ask you, when do men fall on their brothers with mighty weapons and bloody acts? They do such if they do not know that their brother is themselves. . . . But whom do people kill? They kill the noble, the brave, the heroes. They take aim at these and do not know that with these they mean themselves. . .
We can oppose this image of the San Francisco Giants to the kind of team we see in some corporations where the different members of the team try so hard to maintain the same corporate persona…On such a team, nobody shows any individual peculiarities …and I’m sure that no real consciousness can emerge from behind such a mask.
Some people can be over-identified with the persona and experience inauthenticity. This identification with the persona can be due to habituation, social pressures, influences from childhood, defensiveness or anything that has given the individual a message indicating that the character of the persona is a preferable way to be.
Do you agree with Jungian analyst John Giannini, and others, that ESTJ is “the dominant typology of western culture?” Do you think this may be changing? Do you see major, typologically distinct subcultures? What do you see as the dominant typology of other cultures or countries?
Was Shakespeare ultimately cautioning us about the potentially disastrous effects of unbridling the Trickster in psyche or society? …“To be, or not to be.” To trust one’s Self, or not. Therein lies the dilemma of the modern man. With a cacophony of internal archetypal, spiritual, and societal voices, to whom do we listen?
The schizoid nature of western civilization gives credence to our emphasis on the necessity of using all of the functions (S, N, T, F), in both attitudes of Introversion (I) and Extraversion (E) … When civilizations emphasize only one part of psychological type, they diminish themselves and set themselves up to see the world through distorted lenses.
“The black serpent seems to be stronger; the white serpent draws back. Great billows of dust rise from the place of struggle. But then I see: the black serpent pulls itself back again. The front part of its body has become white. Both serpents curl about themselves, one in light, the other in darkness.”