I concluded that I simply did not have the requisite attributes to lead. I now realize that a number of other members of my section were also introverted, and that the majority of people in the unit, Green Berets or otherwise, were not necessarily extraverted; but the organization itself wore a collective persona that was extraverted in appearance.
Issues
Jung’s approach is based on pairs of polarities. Getting eight functions with such a ‘binary approach’ requires three levels of dichotomy. Jung clearly explained his split of the rational functions into two opposite functions and the same for the irrational functions; but he never provided a theoretical context for a third “dimension” of psychological type.
A separation exists between psychology and typology. Many psychologists and even many Jungians ignore Jung’s major work, Psychological Types, and the concepts underlying it. The field has been left mostly to lay practitioners, who use the MBTI® instrument for training, coaching, and other pragmatic applications. What reasons do you see for the divide?
Like the feeling function itself, poetry captures moments, and it is by feeling into these moments that something else opens and experience is transformed into moments of encounter. Often, the word “encounter” implies a “coming against” something, a meeting that holds impact. Thus, the feeling function, by creating an encounter, demands courage.
These at-risk students taught us how to teach everyone. I have described my classroom set-up as an integral part of the instruction. … Intuitively, before knowing about type, I had set up my classroom to accommodate multiple learning styles. Even the ISTJ students, who tend to like the traditional classroom set-up, performed better in my classroom.
In the type table in the accompanying article on the type-diverse classroom, almost 60% of the ‘at risk’ and drop-out students are reported to have dominant extraverted perception, while almost half of the teachers are dominant introverted perceivers. Is extraverted perception misdiagnosed as a learning disability? Or, is that preference actually problematic …
“Everything has a purpose, clocks tell you the time, trains take you to places. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too. ”
Since Sensing and Feeling are not typologically opposed preferences, this may suggest that, contrary to what conventional wisdom might dictate, political liberalism and conservativism may not be logical opposites either. This may suggest a means by which the perspectives of the two political orientations can be bridged.
To the degree that the type community has engendered awareness of alternative ways of encountering the world, one another, and oneself, it is engaged in a critically important service. Lest we forget, however, that the process of growth is often perilous, it is occasionally useful to remind ourselves of these perils.
China has emphasized Se and Ne, leaving itself at present with a relatively weak Ni, even though Ni is China’s natural superior function and its historical birthright. A strong Ni, for example was the consciousness that gave birth to the three great Chinese religions: Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, all of which anticipated Jung’s notion of the Self.