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?
Editors Carol Shumate, Ph.D., ENFP, and Mark Hunziker, INTJ, founded Personality Type in Depth as a forum to bridge psychological type and depth psychology. Both editors are themselves writers and they work together virtually, from North Carolina and Vermont respectively. Shumate's career has been in journalism, publishing, and higher education, while Hunziker's has been primarily in organization development consulting. Shumate's current project is a book on the Trickster archetype in leadership, and Hunziker's is about depth typology, a term he has coined for the interface of the two fields.
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.
“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…
Jung observed that, “The developing personality obeys … only brute necessity; it needs the motivation force of inner and outer fatalities.” Are “outer fatalities” a requisite for growth? Are “inner fatalities” necessarily traumatic and potentially catastrophic? Are there gentler, more positive ways of facilitating development of personality?
Individuation calls us to fight the dragon head-on. The struggles of relationship—whether with another person or within a culture—are opportunities. We can flee and seek a quick-fix, taking what my husband calls “tequila shot” flights to numb the discomfort until the next situation arises. Or we can remain within the oyster shell and endure the uncomfortable rubbing.
Is it INTJ or INTP? Sometimes the MBTI code’s judging/perceiving (J/P) dichotomy is extremely difficult to nail down—showing a low preference clarity on the report and proving elusive to verify. INTJ vs. INTP seems especially problematic. Why is J/P so difficult? Do you have any tips for verification?
“Once upon a time, there was a quiet little village in the French countryside whose people believed in tranquillité.” This opening indicates that the psychological orientation of the village is one of peace and calmness, agreeability and order, suggesting that the village has certain values through which it judges situations—in other words a feeling function is at work.
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).
Which do you trust more to give you reliable information about type: observation or introspection? And what is your type preference? Of course, all type users rely upon both the observation of others and internal self-reflection to expand and confirm their understanding of personality type. But it seems as though we differ in which we prefer.
The modern emphasis on self-awareness seems to have taken our psychological development about as far as it can for now; further progress requires the pendulum to swing towards attending to our interrelatedness, toward Self-awareness. The two most active and influential sociopolitical worldviews of our time, conservatism and progressivism, are both demonstrably collective in orientation.
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.
Jung considered all of the types that the MBTI® code identifies as I—J to be Perceiving types, and all I—Ps to be Judging types, because his use of the terms focuses on the dominant. Myers, however, focused on the extraverted function. So, are I—Js really ‘organized, scheduled, and decisive’ and I—Ps ‘spontaneous, casual, and flexible?’
Which functions do we use when we engage in Jung’s favorite form of internal reflection? Jung conceived of this unique form of meditation as a vehicle for building a bridge between consciousness and unconsciousness, and for connecting our personal unconscious with the collective unconscious. Introverted intuitives seem to embrace this exercise …
Academic personality research likes to consider trait psychology to be the scientific revolution that overtook and replaced Jung’s type psychology. However, it may be more accurate to view type and trait models as complementary because the conceptual divide has been shifting, and many trends in academic personality research now reflect the fundamental principles of Jung’s type system.
Being married is easily the hardest thing I have ever done. Marriage is an all-consuming project that requires energy, commitment, and sustained effort. Unlike my other projects, I can’t just ignore my marriage until inspiration strikes. Mostly, there’s no faking it. As an introvert in an extraverted world, faking it is a lot of how I survive.
In Douglass Wilde’s article about his method of calculating the function-attitudes from MBTI® scores, he adds his voice to the persistent minority who challenge the conventional wisdom about the sequence of function-attitude preferences. … By downloading the Wilde Worksheet for Computing Function-Attitudes, you can test these formulations for yourself.