Viewing the remarkable coincidence of Jung’s and Polanyi’s ideas as a synchronistic event evokes the feeling of a milestone, as if there were a sudden breakthrough in the collective unconscious after a centuries-long epistemic struggle. Despite this accomplishment, the field of Jungian psychology, especially as it is understood in popular culture, has tended to fall into one-sided subjectivism.
History & Biohistory
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 believed that colors symbolize dynamic psychic factors that evolve with consciousness. An analysis of his color studies suggests that the psyche uses color as a way to distinguish different kinds (i.e., functions) of consciousness. “The personality passes through many transformations which show it in different lights and are followed by ever-changing moods.“
The way an autistic individual perceives the world is of significant interest to researchers, for neurological differences have been found to impact the autistic individual’s perception and information-processing tremendously. Because Jung’s typology frames investigation of the psyche in terms of such mental processes, it can provide a new perspective on this very complex condition.
Rather than truly being able to move down to embrace the inferior function, to achieve “integrity in depth,” Nietzsche tries to “overcome” the problem of the personality. His fantastic intuitions are not wholly thought through, and so he is not able to deal with the real task of individuation, which asks us to ground consciousness in the reality of body and mind.
Independent of the historical cycle, Republican presidents tend more toward Sensing, while Democratic presidents tend more toward Intuition, as predicted by theory. This calls to mind G. K. Chesterton’s famous remark, “The job of liberals is to keep making new mistakes, while the job of conservatives is to make sure that old mistakes never get corrected.”
First comes the development of the Hero; next is the “fall,” which brings awareness that something is missing, leading to the rejection of the heroic inflation and the longing for more. Then comes the real “journey,” holding the tension between our highly conscious dominant/superior function and our much less conscious inferior function.
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?
The type code had another unintended effect, which was to elevate the E-I and the J-P dichotomies to the same level as the functions. I had always thought of myself as an Introvert and nothing else. I had also been taught that I was a Judging type and I had been told that “J’s decide quickly,” but that was not true for me. So there were holes in my preference framework where my experience did not fit what I was taught.
… A wise employee will come to understand the culture of the company … and recognize that the team has long since developed a certain way of taking care of others. The team uses its auxiliary function, not yours, or the one your tertiary Child expects it to use. You cannot expect an organization to take care of you in the way that you want …