Lecture given at the Congress of Swiss Psychiatrists (Zurich, 1928) and published as «Psychologische Typologies» in Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart (Zurich, 1931). In preparing this work, we used (with changes) the Russian translation from German, made by A. M. Bokovikov and published / 134- P. 90-110 / Source: www.jungland.ru
Character is an established stable individual form of human existence. Since this form embodies both physical and mental nature, general characterology is a study of the signs of both physical and mental properties. The inexplicable unity of a living being is the reason why a physical sign is not just a physical one, but a mental one is not just a mental one. The inseparability and integrity of nature knows nothing of those incompatibilities and differences that the human mind is forced to establish in order to be able to pave the way to understanding.
The distinction between body and mind is an artificial dichotomy, a discrimination that is no doubt based more on the peculiarities of the knowing intellect than on the nature of things. In reality, the mutual penetration of bodily and mental signs is so deep that, by the properties of the body, we can not only draw far-reaching conclusions about the qualities of the mental, but also by mental specificity, we can judge the corresponding bodily forms. The latter, of course, will require incomparably greater efforts from us, but, perhaps, not because the psyche has less influence on the body than the body on the psyche, but because if we start from the mental, then we will have to draw a conclusion from the unknown about the known, while otherwise we have the advantage: because here we can start from the known, that is, from the body we see. Contrary to the psychological theory that we supposedly have today, the psychic is still much more infinite and darker than the visible surface of the body. The psychic is still a foreign, unexplored country, from which only indirect news comes to us, transmitted through the functions of consciousness subject to all sorts of illusions.
Therefore, the path from the external to the internal, from the known to the unknown, from the body to the psyche seems to be safer. Therefore, all attempts to create characterology began from the outside. These include such ancestral methods as, for example, astrology, which even turned to the stars in order to comprehend those lines of fate whose beginnings lie in the human heart, as well as palmistry, Gall’s phrenology and Lavater’s physiognomy. Recent attempts of this kind are represented by graphology, Kretschmer’s physiological typology, and Rorschach’s inkblot method. As you can see, the paths from the external to the internal, from the bodily to the mental, are quite enough. Such a direction from the outer to the inner must be a path of investigation until certain elementary mental states are established with sufficient certainty. But once that happens, the path may be reversed. Then we can ask the question: what is the bodily expression of a particular mental state? Unfortunately, we have not yet advanced enough in this area to be able to touch on this issue at all, because the basic condition, namely, a satisfactory ascertainment of a mental state, is still far from being fulfilled. Moreover, we have just begun to practice the arrangement of mental inventory, and even then not always successfully.
Merely stating that certain people look like this and that doesn’t mean anything at all if it doesn’t allow us to infer relevant content. We will only be satisfied when we know what kind of mental corresponds to certain physical qualities. The body without the psyche tells us nothing, just as—let us take the standpoint of the psychic—the soul cannot mean anything without the body. If we are now going to judge by some physical attribute the corresponding mental quality, then we do this, as has already been said, according to the known about the unknown.
Unfortunately, I am compelled to emphasize this idea, since psychology is the youngest of all sciences and therefore is in the grip of prejudice. The fact that, in essence, psychology was only recently discovered is direct proof that it took us too long to separate the mental from the subject and thus single it out as an object of objective knowledge. Psychology as a natural science is in fact an acquisition of the most recent times, since until now it has been just as fantastic a product of arbitrariness as was medieval natural science. It was believed that psychology can be disposed of. And this prejudice perceptibly follows us. Mental life is something most immediate, and therefore, it seems, the most familiar, even more than familiar: it yawns in our face, it annoys us with the banality of its endless everyday life, we even suffer from this and do our best not to think about it. . Due to the fact that the psychic is the most immediate phenomenon, because we ourselves are psychic, we can hardly assume anything other than that we are deeply, thoroughly and long familiar with it. Therefore, everyone not only has his own opinion about psychology, but is also convinced that he, of course, is the best in it. Psychiatrists, who have to fight with relatives and guardians of their patients, whose intelligence (relatives and guardians) has already become the talk of the town, were perhaps the first people who, as a professional group, faced the blind prejudice prevailing in the mass that in psychological matters everyone understands more than anyone else, which, however, does not prevent the psychiatrist himself from sharing this opinion. And it comes to the point that he is forced to admit: “There are only two normal people in this city. Professor V. is the second.”
In psychology today it is necessary, after all, to come to an understanding that the psychic is something completely unknown, although it seems absolutely familiar, and that everyone knows the psyche of another, perhaps, better than his own. At any rate, this would be a very useful heuristic to begin with. It is precisely because of the immediacy of psychic phenomena that psychology was discovered so late. And since we are still only at the origins of science, we do not have concepts and definitions with the help of which we could cover the facts known to us. The former are absent from us, the latter (facts) are not; moreover, they press us on all sides, we are even inundated with them, unlike other sciences, which are forced to look for them, and the natural grouping of them, as, for example, chemical elements or the family of plants, is mediated by us by a visual concept a posteriori. Quite different, however, is the case with the psyche; here, with our empirically visual attitude, we simply fall into the continuous flow of our subjective mental phenomena, and if a comprehensive general concept suddenly emerges from this flow, then it is nothing more than a simple symptom. Since we ourselves are psychic, then, allowing the psychic process to be fulfilled, we almost inevitably dissolve in it and thereby lose the ability of cognitive discrimination and comparison.
This is only one difficulty; the other is that as we separate from the spatial phenomenon and approach the spacelessness of the psychic, we lose the possibility of an accurate quantitative measurement. Even stating facts becomes difficult. For example, if I want to emphasize the invalidity of a thing, then I say that I just thought. “I wouldn’t even have such thoughts if it weren’t for … and in general I didn’t think like that.” Remarks of this kind prove how obscure psychic facts are, or rather how vaguely subjective they seem, for they are in fact just as objective and definite as any other event. “I really thought this and that, and from now on it will always be present in my actions.” Even to this, one might say, self-evident recognition, many people must literally wade through, sometimes with a huge strain of moral strength. It is with these difficulties that we encounter when we draw a conclusion from a known external phenomenon about the state of the mental.
From now on, the field of my research is narrowed from the clinical statement, in the broadest sense, of external signs to the study and classification of all mental data that can be identified and established at all. From this work first arises a psychic phenomenology, which makes possible the emergence of a corresponding structural doctrine, and from the empirical application of the structural doctrine finally follows a psychological typology.
Clinical research is based on the description of symptoms, and the step from symptomatology to psychic phenomenology can be compared with the transition from purely symptomatic pathology to knowledge of cellular and metabolic pathology, for psychic phenomenology allows us to see the processes of the mental background that underlie the symptoms that arise. It is well known that this was made possible by the application of the analytical method. Today we have real knowledge about the mental processes that cause psychogenic symptoms. This knowledge is nothing but the doctrine of complexes, which, in fact, turns out to be the basis of mental phenomenology. Whatever is at work in the dark subsoils of the psyche—of course, there are various opinions on this matter—at least one thing is certain: first of all, these are special affective contents, the so-called complexes, which have a certain autonomy. We have already come across the expression «autonomous complex» more than once, but it seems to me that it is often misused, while some contents of the unconscious actually exhibit behavior that I cannot call otherwise than «autonomous», thus emphasizing their ability to to resist conscious intentions, to appear and disappear as they please. As you know, complexes are primarily such mental quantities that are devoid of control by consciousness. They are split off from it and lead a special kind of existence in the dark sphere of the unconscious, from where they can constantly hinder or assist the work of consciousness.
Further deepening of the doctrine of complexes consistently leads us to the problem of the emergence of complexes. There are also various theories on this. But be that as it may, experience shows that complexes always contain something like conflict, or at least are either its cause or effect. In any case, the complexes are characterized by signs of conflict, shock, shock, awkwardness, incompatibility. These are the so-called “sore points”, in French “betes noires”, the British in this regard mention “skeletons in the cupboard” (“skeletons in the cupboard”), which they don’t really want to remember and even less want to, to be reminded of by others, but who, often in the most unpleasant way, remind themselves of themselves. They always contain memories, desires, fears, duties, necessities or thoughts that cannot be got rid of, and therefore they constantly interfere and harm, interfering with our conscious life.
Obviously, complexes are a kind of inferiority in the broadest sense, and I should immediately note that a complex or having a complex does not necessarily mean inferiority. It only means that there is something incompatible, unassimilated, perhaps even some kind of obstacle, but it is also an incentive for great aspirations and therefore, quite possibly, even a new opportunity for success. Consequently, in this sense complexes are downright the center or nodal point of mental life, they cannot be dispensed with; moreover, they must be present, because otherwise mental activity would come to a stagnation fraught with consequences. But they signify also the unfulfilled in the individual, the area where, at least for now, he is defeated, where nothing can be overcome or mastered; that is, no doubt, it is a weak point in any sense of the word.
This character of the complex largely illuminates the causes of its occurrence. Obviously, it appears as a result of a collision of a requirement for adaptation and a special property of the individual unsuitable for this requirement. Thus, the complex becomes for us a diagnostically valuable symptom of an individual disposition.
At first glance, it seems that there are an infinite number of variants of complexes, but their careful comparison reveals a relatively small number of basic forms, and they all build on the first experiences of childhood. This is as it should be, because the individual disposition is not at all acquired during life, but, being innate, becomes evident already in childhood. Therefore, the parental complex is nothing but a manifestation of the collision between reality and an unsuitable property of the individual in this sense. Therefore, the first form of the complex must be the parental complex, because the parents are the first reality with which the child can come into conflict.
Therefore, the existence of a parental complex, like nothing else, betrays to us the presence of special properties in an individual. In practice, however, we soon see that the main thing lies not in the fact of the presence of the parental complex, but rather in how this complex manifests itself in the individual. There are many variations here, and perhaps only a small part of them can be reduced to the peculiarities of parental influence, since many children are often exposed to the same influence and yet react to it in completely different ways.
Therefore, I began to pay attention to precisely these differences, saying to myself that it is thanks to them that one can recognize individual dispositions in their originality. Why does one child in a neurotic family react to parental influences with hysteria, another with obsessive-compulsive disorder, a third with psychosis, and a fourth seem to not react at all? This problem of «choosing a neurosis», which also confronted Freud, gives the parental complex as such an etiological significance, thereby transferring the posing of the question to the reacting individual and his particular disposition.
Freud tried to approach the solution of this problem, but his attempts turned out to be completely unsatisfactory, and I myself am still far from being able to answer this question. In general, I consider it premature to raise the question of the choice of neuroses. Because before approaching this extremely difficult problem, we must know much more about how the individual reacts, namely, how he reacts to obstacles. For example, we need to cross a stream that is not crossed by a bridge and which is too wide to step over. So we have to jump over. To do this, we have a complex functional system, namely psychomotor — a fully formed function, which you only need to use. But before this happens, something else purely psychic happens: a decision is made about what needs to be done in general. It is here that decisive individual events take place, which, revealingly, are rarely recognized by the subject as typical or are not recognized as such at all, because, as a rule, they are either not considered at all, or they are paid attention to only in the very last place. Just as the psychomotor apparatus habitually prepares itself for a jump, so, in turn, the mental apparatus habitually (and therefore unconsciously) prepares itself to make a decision about what to do in general.
Opinions about the composition of this apparatus are very different. Only one thing is certain — that each individual has his own characteristic way of making decisions and dealing with difficulties. If you ask one, he will say that he jumped over the stream because he likes to jump; another will say that he had no other option; the third — that when he meets any obstacle, he has a desire to overcome it. The fourth did not jump because he cannot stand useless efforts, the fifth because there was no urgent need to cross to the other side.
I deliberately chose this banal example to demonstrate how insignificant such motivations seem. They seem so superficial that we tend to push them all aside and explain everything in our own way. And yet they are precisely those variations that allow a real look at individual mental systems of adaptation. If we consider the first case — where the stream is crossed for the pleasure of jumping — in other situations in life, we will probably find that the vast majority of this person’s actions are done for the sake of pleasure. The second, who jumps because he sees no other way to cross, is attentive and obnoxious and, as we will see, traveling through his life, is always guided by the principle of faute-demieux (for lack of a better — fr.), etc. Everyone has already a special mental system has been worked out in advance, which makes the decision. It is easy to imagine that the number of such installations is legion. Their individual diversity cannot be exhausted, just as the individual variations of crystals are inexhaustible, which, without a doubt, belong, however, to one system or another. But just as crystals point to relatively simple basic laws, so attitudes point to some basic properties inherent in certain groups.
The attempts of the human spirit to create a typology and thereby bring order into the chaos of the individual — one can say with certainty — are rooted in antiquity. There is no doubt that the very first attempt of this kind was made by astrology, which arose in the ancient East, in the so-called trines of the four elements — air, water, earth and fire. The trigon of air in the horoscope consists of three air castles of the Zodiac — Aquarius, Gemini and Libra; the trigon of fire — from Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, etc. According to ancient ideas, one who was born in these trines partly possesses their airy or fiery nature, and this, in turn, determines the corresponding temperament and destiny. Therefore, the physiological typology of antiquity, that is, the division into four humoral temperaments, is in close connection with ancient cosmological views. What was previously explained by the constellations of the zodiac was now expressed in the physiological language of the ancient physicians, specifically in the words phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric and melancholic, which are nothing but the name of bodily juices. This latter typology is known to have persisted until at least 1800. As far as astrological typology is concerned, it is surprisingly still holding on to everyone and is even experiencing a new flowering today.
This historical excursion into the past convinces us that our modern attempts to create a typology are by no means something new and unprecedented, if the conscience of a scientist does not allow us to return to these old, intuitive ways. We must find our own solution to this problem, a solution that satisfies the demands of science. This is where the main difficulty of the problem of typology arises — the question of scales or criteria. The astrological criterion was simple: it was the objectively given position of the stars at birth. The question of how the zodiacal constellations and planets acquired the qualities of temperament extends into the gray fog of the past and remains unanswered. The criterion of the four old physiological temperaments was the appearance and behavior of the individual — the criterion is absolutely the same as that of today’s physiological typification. But what, however, should be the criterion of psychological typology?
Recall the example given earlier, in which various individuals had to cross a stream. How and from what angle should we classify their habitual motivations? One does it for pleasure, another does it because inaction is even more painful, a third does not do it at all, because he holds the opposite opinion on this matter, etc. The range of possibilities seems endless and hopeless.
Others would probably have approached this problem differently, I don’t know how. In this regard, I can only say one thing: since I took up this business, I must endure when I am reproached for the fact that my way of solving a problem is just my personal prejudice. And this objection is so true that I do not even know how one could defend against it. I can only refer to the old Columbus, who, based on a subjective assumption, on a false hypothesis and following the path left to him by modern shipping, discovered America … No matter what we consider and no matter how we consider, we still look only with our own eyes. That is why science is not done by one person, but by many. Each individual person only contributes, and it is only in this sense that I dare to speak of my way of looking at things.
My profession has long forced me to take into account the peculiarities of individuals, and the special circumstance that for many years — I do not know how many — I had to treat spouses and make a man and a woman mutually acceptable, emphasizes still more the need to establish certain average truths. How many times have I had to say: “You see, your wife is a very active person and you really can’t expect her whole existence to be only in the household.” This is already typing, and this expresses a kind of statistical truth. There are active and passive natures. However, this common truth did not satisfy me. My next attempt was to suppose that there is a kind of thinking and unthinking natures, for I saw that many natures, which at first glance seem passive, are in fact not so much passive as prudent. They first think about the situation — then they act, and since for them this is a usual course of action, they miss cases where direct action without reflection is necessary, and thus an opinion is formed about their passivity. The unthinking have always seemed to me those who, without thinking, jump with both feet into a situation, only to realize later that they seem to have landed in a swamp. Thus, they could perhaps be characterized as unthinking, which was appropriately shown in activity; the foresight of others in a number of cases is, in the final analysis, a very important activity and a very responsible action in comparison with a thoughtless fleeting outburst of mere efficiency. However, I soon discovered that indecision is by no means always due to foresight, but rather, action is not always thoughtless. The indecisiveness of the former is just as often based on his inherent timidity, or at least on something like a simple retreat before a too difficult task, and the direct activity of the second is often due to a greater trust in the object than in himself. This observation prompts me to formulate typing as follows: there is a whole class of people who, at the moment of reaction to a given situation, sort of step back, quietly saying “no”, and only after that they react, and there are people belonging to another class who, in such situations react directly, apparently in full confidence that their action is undoubtedly the right one. That is, the first class is characterized by a certain negative attitude towards the object, the latter is rather positive.
As you know, the first class corresponds to the introverted, and the last — to the extraverted attitude. The introduction of both these terms achieved as little as the discovery of Molière’s «bourgeois gentilhomme», which he usually speaks in prose. These types will have meaning and significance only when we know what else is inherent in each of them.
After all, you can’t be an introvert without being one in every way. The concept of introvert means: everything spiritual is manifested in an introvert as it is determined for him by the relevant laws. If this were not the case, then the characterization of a certain individual as an extrovert would be as insignificant as the statement that his body length is 175 centimeters or that he is brown or brachycephalic. As is well known, such statements contain little more than the fact they signify. However, the expression extravert claims much more, because it seeks to express that the consciousness of the extravert, as well as his unconscious, must have certain qualities, that all the behavior of the extravert, his attitude towards people, even the course of his life, indicate certain typical properties.
Introversion and extraversion, as types of attitudes, designate a disposition that largely determines the mental process as a whole, since it characterizes a predisposed response and thereby determines not only the mode of action and the type of subjective experience, but also the nature of unconscious compensation.
Therefore, the definition of habitual response (Reactionshabitus) should hit the nail on the head, since predisposition (Habitus) is to a certain extent the central switching point, from where, on the one hand, external behavior is regulated, and on the other hand, it influences the formation of specific experience. A certain behavior gives the corresponding results, and thanks to the subjective understanding of these results, experience appears, which, for its part, once again influences the behavior and thus, according to the proverb “Everyone is the smith of his own happiness”, is reflected in the individual fate.
As far as habitual responses are concerned, there is perhaps no doubt that here we grasp the central link of the problem. But here another thorny question arises: can we (adequately) characterize habitual responses? There may be a wide variety of opinions on this subject, even if someone has intimate knowledge in this particular area. The facts that I was able to find in favor of my point of view are combined by me in a book on types, and I am fully aware that my typing is not the only true or the only possible one.
Contrasting introversion and extraversion is easy to draw, but simple formulations, unfortunately, are most often suspicious. Too easily they cover up real difficulties. I say this from my own experience, for no sooner had I published the first formulation of my criteria—this event would soon be twenty years old—when, to my displeasure, I discovered that I had somehow got into trouble. Something didn’t fit. Apparently, I tried to explain too much by simple means, as is often the case with the first joy of discovery.
I discovered a fact that could not be denied, namely, there were really huge differences within the groups of introverts and extroverts themselves, differences that were so great that I began to doubt whether I saw anything right at all. In order to dispel these doubts, it took about ten years of observation and comparison.
The question of where the huge differences within the type come from, confronted me with unforeseen difficulties, which I could not approach for a long time. Some of these difficulties were based on observation and perception of differences, but their main cause was, as before, the problem of criteria, that is, an appropriate designation for character differences. And here for the first time I clearly understood how young psychology is. It is hardly anything else than a chaos of arbitrary teachings, a good part of which, of course, owes its origin to the isolated brain of a scientist due to generatio aequivoca and thus likened to Zeus. I don’t want to be disrespectful, but still I can’t resist confronting a professor of psychology with the psychology of a woman, a Chinese, and a Southern Negro. Our psychology must come to life, otherwise we will simply get stuck in the Middle Ages.
I realized that it is impossible to extract clear criteria from the chaos of modern psychology, that they, rather, still need to be created, and not out of blue air, but on the basis of the previous invaluable works of those whose names the history of psychology will not pass over in silence.
Within the framework of one report, I do not have the opportunity to mention those individual observations that prompted me to single out certain mental functions as criteria for the differences under consideration. In general, only one thing can be stated, that the differences, as far as they have now become clear to me, lie in the fact that an introvert, for example, does not simply step back in front of an object and hesitate, but does it in a very special way. And he does his actions not like any other introvert, but also in a very special way. Just as a lion strikes his enemy or prey not with his tail, like a crocodile, but with his paws, which contain his specific strength, so the way we react is usually characterized by our strengths, that is, the use of our most reliable and developed function, which, however , does not prevent us from sometimes reacting with our own specific weaknesses. Accordingly, we will prepare or look for some situations and avoid others, and in this way we will accordingly acquire specific, different experiences. The intellectual will adapt to the world with the help of his intellect, and not at all like a boxer of the sixth weight category, although he can use his fists in a fit of rage. In the struggle for existence and adaptation, each person instinctively uses his most developed function, which as a result becomes the criterion for the habitual way of responding.
The question can now be put as follows: how should all these functions be so embraced by general concepts that they can stand out from the vagueness of a simple individual existence? A typification of this kind has long been created by social life in the figures of a peasant, a worker, an artist, a scientist, a warrior, etc., or in a list of all professions. But psychology has practically nothing to do with such typification, because among the people of science, as one well-known scientist once sarcastically said, there are those who are just “intellectual porters”.
What is meant here is a very subtle thing. It is not enough to talk about intelligence, for example, because this concept is too general and indefinite; anything that functions smoothly, quickly, efficiently, and expediently is reasonable. Both mind and stupidity are not functions, but modalities, and they never talk about what, but always about how. The same goes for moral and aesthetic criteria. We must be able to designate what acts first in habitual reactions. We are therefore compelled to use here something that at first glance looks as terrifying as the psychology of abilities in the eighteenth century. In reality, we resort to concepts already available in ordinary language, which are accessible and clear to everyone. If, for example, I speak of «thinking,» only a philosopher does not know what is meant by this, but no amateur will find this incomprehensible; for we use this word every day and always mean by it roughly the same thing, but if you ask the layman to give a clear definition of thinking, he will find himself in a very difficult position. The same goes for «memory» or «feeling». As difficult as it is to scientifically define such immediate psychological concepts, they are just as easy to understand in everyday language. Language par excellence (preferably mostly) is a collection of visuals; that is why cherished, too abstract concepts are fixed with such difficulty and die off very easily, because they have too little contact with reality. However, thinking and feeling are such inalienable realities for us that any non-primitive language has quite definite expressions for them. Therefore, we can be sure that these expressions coincide accordingly with quite definite psychic facts, however these complex facts may be scientifically called. Everyone imagines what, for example, consciousness is, and although science is still far from knowing this, no one can doubt that the concept of «consciousness» covers quite definite psychic facts.
That is why I took as criteria for distinguishing within one type of attitude simply amateurish concepts expressed in language and designated by them the corresponding mental functions. For example, I took thinking as it is generally understood, because it struck me that some people think incommensurably more than others and, accordingly, in their decisions they attach more weight to reason. They use thinking to understand the world and adapt to it, and whatever they encounter is subject to reflection and reflection, or, in extreme cases, bringing it into line with predetermined general principles. Other people surprisingly neglect thinking in favor of the emotional factor, that is, feeling. They are staunchly pursuing a «politics of feeling» and it takes a real emergency to get them thinking. These people are the exact opposite of the first type, which is especially striking when the first are business partners of the second, or when they enter into marriage with each other. At the same time, one of them may give preference to his thinking, regardless of whether he is an extrovert or an introvert. Unless then he uses it only in an appropriate way for his type.
However, the predominance of one function or another does not explain all the differences. After all, what I call the thinking or emotional type are people who again contain something in common that I cannot characterize otherwise than by the word rationality. The fact that thinking is essentially rational will probably not be disputed by anyone. But when we get to the feeling, there will be strong counter-arguments that I would not immediately brush aside. On the contrary, I can assure you that the problem of feeling has presented me with no small puzzle. However, I do not want to overload my report with a presentation of various scientific opinions regarding this concept, but I will only briefly express my own point of view on this issue. The main difficulty here is that the words «feeling» or «feeling» are used in a variety of ways. This is especially true for the German language (the German word «das Gefuhl» is translated as «feeling, feeling, flair»), to a lesser extent — for English and French. Perhaps, first of all, we must strictly separate this word from the concept of «sensation», which characterizes the function of the sense organs. Then, perhaps, we need to somehow agree that the feeling of regret, for example, in a conceptual sense, should be different from the feeling that the weather will change or that the shares of the aluminum concern will rise. Therefore, I suggested that by feeling in the first sense we understand feeling as such and, conversely, the word “feeling”, used in the latter case, should be removed from the psychological lexicon and replaced by the concept of “sensation”, if we are talking about perceptual experience, or by the concept of “intuition”, if we are talking about a kind of perception that cannot be directly reduced to a conscious perceptual experience. Therefore, I have defined sensation as conscious perception through the senses, and intuition as perception through the unconscious.
Of course, one can debate the legitimacy of these definitions until the end of time, but such a discussion ultimately boils down to the question of how to call some famous animal: Rhinozerus, rhinoceros, or something else, because, in essence, you just need to know what and how we call. Psychology is a virgin land where the language has yet to gain a foothold. Temperature, as we know, can be measured in Réaumur, Celsius, or Fahrenheit, and the only thing to do here is to say which method was used to measure in each given case.
As follows from what has been said, I consider feeling as a function of the soul, separating it from sensation and premonition or intuition. Anyone who confuses these functions with feeling in the narrow sense of the sensu stricto is, of course, incapable of recognizing the rationality of feeling. But whoever shares them cannot evade the recognition of the fact that emotional evaluations, emotional judgments, and emotions in general, can be not only rational, but also logical, consistent, and reasonable, and in this sense exactly the same as thinking. This fact seems strange to the thinking type, but it can be easily explained by the characteristic feature that with a differentiated thinking function, feeling is always less developed, that is, it is more primitive, and therefore contaminated with other functions, moreover, with irrational, illogical and extra-rational functions, then are functions of sensation and intuition, whose task is not to assess the situation. Both of the latter functions are opposed to rational functions, and for a reason that corresponds to their deepest essence. When we think, we do it with the intention of arriving at some conclusion or conclusion, and when we feel, it is in order to arrive at a correct assessment; sensation and intuition, as functions of perception, aim at the perception of the given, and not at its interpretation or evaluation. Therefore, they simply have to be open to the given, and not act selectively on certain principles. This is inherently irrational, because there are no methods by which one could prove that there must be so many planets or so many types of warm-blooded animals. Irrationality is what is lacking in thinking and feeling, rationality is what is lacking in sensation and intuition.
There are many people whose reactions are based chiefly on irrationality, that is, either on sensation or on intuition, but never on both, for sensation is as antagonistic to intuition as thinking is to feeling. After all, when I intend to establish with my ears and eyes what is really happening, I can do anything, but not dream and fantasize at the same time, but it is precisely this latter that the intuitivist must do in order to give space to his unconscious or an object. This is why the feeling type is the opposite of the intuitive type. Unfortunately, time does not allow me to go into those interesting variations that arise due to the extraverted or introverted attitude of irrational types.
I would like to say a few more words about the natural consequences that the dominance of any one function over others leads to, namely, how this affects other functions. A person, as you know, can never be everything at once and can never be completely perfect. It always develops only certain qualities and leaves others underdeveloped. What happens to those functions that he does not use daily, and therefore does not develop them by exercise? They remain in varying degrees in a primitive, infantile, often only semi-conscious, and sometimes even completely unconscious state; in this way they form the inferiority characteristic of each type, which, as an integral part, enters into the general structure of character. A one-sided preference for thinking is always accompanied by an inferiority of the senses, and a differentiated perception in the same way affects the intuitive faculty, and vice versa.
Whether a function is differentiated or not can be fairly easily determined by its strength, stability, consistency, reliability, and adaptability. Her inferiority, however, is often not so easy to describe or recognize. An important criterion here is its lack of independence and the resulting dependence on circumstances and other people, as well as its inconstancy, unreliability in use, suggestiveness and vague character. An inferior (subordinate) function can never be relied upon, because it cannot be controlled, moreover, one can even become its victim.
Unfortunately, here I am unable to give a detailed description of psychological types, and therefore I have to content myself with a brief summary of the main ideas of psychological typology. The general result of my previous work in this area is to distinguish between two main types of attitude: extraversion and introversion, as well as four types of functions: thinking, feeling, feeling and intuitive, which vary depending on the general attitude, and thus give a total of eight options.
I was almost reproachfully asked why I am talking about exactly four functions, no more and no less. The fact that there are exactly four of them turned out first of all purely empirically. But that a certain degree of wholeness has been achieved through them may be demonstrated by the following consideration. Feeling establishes what actually happens. Thinking allows us to know what a given feeling means — what is its value, and, finally, intuition points to the possible «whence» and «whither» contained in what is at the moment. Thanks to this, orientation in the modern world can be as complete as determining a place in space using geographical coordinates. The four functions are a kind of four sides of the horizon, as arbitrary as they are necessary. Nothing prevents shifting the coordinate point in one direction or another and generally giving them other names. It all depends on how we agree and how expedient it is.
But I must confess one thing: I would never want to do my psychological research expedition without this compass, and not for the obvious human reason that everyone is in love with their own ideas, but because of the objective fact that thereby appears a system of measurement and orientation, and this, in turn, makes possible the emergence of a critical psychology that has been absent from us for so long.