Summary of Jung’s First Three Letters
EDITORS’ NOTE: This summary is quite obviously from Jung’s own hand, presumably written when considering the correspondence for publication. The translation is based upon the text as published by Iselin (1982, pp. 122–30).
TYPES
Jung: Correspondence with Schmid
1.
A person with intellectual abilities instinctively prefers to adjust to the object by way of thinking (abstraction), whereas a person whose feeling exceeds his intellectual abilities prefers to adjust to the object by way of feeling himself into it. This results in the rational quality of thinking in the former and the rational quality of feeling in the latter. Owing to the preference of thinking, feeling-into will remain in a relatively undeveloped state and will thus function in an irregular, unpredictable, and uncontrollable way—in one word, irrationally. Naturally man, ever mindful of his role as Homo sapiens, tries to control the irrational with the rational, so that the thinking person wants to force his feeling to serve his thinking, and the feeling person his thinking to serve his feeling.
The stronger my ideal is, and the more I cherish it, the more I actually have to condemn the other, because he272 acts contrary to my ideal—which I naturally consider to be the ideal. After all, I want to purge my thinking of all that is erratic and unaccountable, of all pleasure and unpleasure of personal feeling, and raise it to the height of justness and the crystal-clear purity of the universally valid idea, way beyond anything connected with mere feeling. You, on the contrary, want to put your feeling above your personal thinking and to free it from all the fantasized and infantile thoughts that might impede its development. That is why the thinking person represses his all-embracing feeling, and the feeling person his all-embracing thinking. But the thinking person accepts feelings that correspond to his thinking, and the feeling person accepts thoughts that correspond to his feeling.
I even suspect that the thinking person speaks of feeling when he is actually thinking, and the feeling person of thinking when he is feeling. It is certain, however, that what the feeling person calls thinking is just a representation but not an abstraction. His approach to thinking is therefore extraordinarily concretistic, and it is immediately noticeable that it cannot turn into an abstraction. Vice versa, the feeling of the thinking person is not at all what the feeling person would call feeling, but is really a sensation, as a rule of a reactive nature, and thus very concretistic, if not to say “physiological.”
3.
The introvert does not comprehend the object directly but by means of abstraction, that is, by a thinking process that is inserted between himself and the object. The attitude he assumes toward the object is a certain rejection, therefore, which can even grow into a kind of fear of the object. His primary reaction toward the object is actually not love, but rather fear. It is likely that in the unconscious of the introvert there is a love for the object that compensates his fear of it, while in the unconscious of the extravert there is a fear that compensates his love for the object. In pathological cases, unconscious love also becomes a source of heightened fear of the object for the introvert, and, conversely, unconscious fear becomes a source of powerful attraction to the object for the extravert.
It is not so that the thinking person is quasi-characterized by the absence of feeling, and the feeling person by the absence of thinking, which would certainly be completely wrong. The introvert does feel, too, and very intensely so, only in a way different from the extravert.
This hypothetical thinking—which is by no means the expression of a personal opinion—is extraordinarily misleading for the extravert, because he is always inclined to understand such an expression in a concrete way. Conversely, the introvert is always led by the nose by the extravert’s hypothetical feeling.
The introvert needs the object for his thinking, because it is precisely via the object that he adapts to outer reality. I’d like to say that this is exactly where his mistake lies: he thinks objects, instead of feeling them, for these objects are, after all, human beings who quite refuse to be only thought, although the introvert fancies that he is actually loving the object in this way.
The introvert cannot follow the other’s hypothetical feeling, which feels like a loveless experiment to him. He feels it in this way because he feels concretistically, whereas the extravert can feel abstractly beyond the object, just like the introvert can think abstractly beyond the object, which naturally is felt as equally loveless by the extravert.
The introvert, too, loves the object, through his thinking; indeed, it is indispensable for his thinking. This is not so for the extravert. For him, the object is an obstacle for his thinking, because his thinking disregards the object. The representation of the extravert refers completely to the object, and is, therefore, in complete agreement with outer reality, while his thinking is in agreement with his own inner reality. This is not the case in the introvert. His representation of things is inadequate, precisely because of the lack of feeling-into [the object]. His thinking is in accordance with outer reality, however, but not with his own inner reality. This explains that the introvert thinks and preaches all sorts of nice things, but does not do them himself, in fact, but does the contrary; whereas the extravert does all sorts of good and nice things, but does not think them, but the contrary. The extravert has flourishing social contacts, the introvert does not. The extravert knows, by feeling himself into others, by what human means people can be won over, whereas the introvert tries to create values in himself with which he tries to impress and force others toward him or even bring them to his knees. He does this with the help of the power principle, while the extravert does it with the pleasure-unpleasure mechanism.
The more ideal the attitude of a type is, the more likely his plan will fail. For if I develop an ideal attitude I will become one-sided. If I am one-sided, however, I will stretch the pairs of opposites in my nature apart, thus activating the unconscious standpoint that runs directly counter to my own ideal.
Thus it comes that the extravert, with his idealistic attitude, gathers inferior followers around him who, although they seem to be faithfully and gratefully devoted to him, actually flatter his unconscious power principle in Byzantine ways. Independent persons turn away from him, however—ungratefully, as he says—which naturally makes him feel misunderstood in his most ideal values.
The ideally oriented introverted person is faced with the fact that he scares away from himself precisely the human love and joy that he is really trying to find behind all his desire to impress and to be superior, and thus he keeps and chains to himself only those inferior persons who know best how to cater to his desire. This explains, for instance, the well-known fixation of introverted scholars or other intellectually superior persons to women of an inferior type, to whores and the like. The fault lies in straining the ideal attitude too much.
Now the solution of this problem is intimately connected with the interpretation on the subjective plane. The only goal for the ideally oriented introvert is the production of impersonal, imperative values, and for the equally ideally oriented extravert the only goal is the love for the object. But both these endeavors are of a hypothetical nature, however. They do not express man’s true nature but are mere hypotheses about how the desired goal might be reached. While the introvert’s conscious attitude is an impersonal and just attitude of power, his unconscious attitude aims at inferior lust and pleasure; and while the extravert’s conscious attitude is a personal love for human beings, his unconscious attitude aims at unjust, tyrannical power.
The interpretation on the subjective plane is trying to mediate between the two. Its aim is to help the individual accept his unconscious opposite.
The introvert also tries, through the hypothesis of abstraction, to reach the object, actually reality, which seems to him chaotic only because of the projection of his unused and therefore undeveloped feeling. He tries to conquer the object by thinking. But he wants to reach the object quite as much as the extravert. The extravert wants to get to the object but actually only in order to come to himself by going beyond it. He has fled from himself, because his unused and, therefore, chaotic world of thoughts has made it unpleasant, even unendurable, for him to stay with himself.
Because of the nonacceptance of the unconscious opposite, the typical ideal striving leads to a disastrous violation of the other, and the worst thing is that neither of them notices why he is violating the other.
5.
I have to admire the extravert’s capacity to move ahead of the difficulty, and beyond it, with his feeling. The extravert feels prospectively, the introvert retrospectively, so that the latter remains longer under the impression of the difficulty.
For me it is essential that both, the rational as well as the irrational, are accepted. The two truths have indeed something to do with the two “realities,” which we might call the “psychological” and the “real” one. Both types share the error of believing that they will find their driving force in the outside world. The introvert is completely extraverted in his thinking, just as the extravert is in his feeling, only the introvert takes possession of the idea of the object, whereas the extravert takes possession of the object itself. The introvert thinks with the object, the extravert feels with it. Both are completely rational. But they find their own irrational (i.e., psychological) truth only in themselves, and with it the true source of energy, because life flows from ourselves and not from the object. We are blinded in this respect by the spirit of our age. Not only nations but individuals, too, are alienated from themselves in modernity by interindividual and international relations, and they find the object of their desire always where there is already someone else. This has led to the boundless international superficiality, which is nothing but the mass phenomenon of interindividual normalization and equalization. And the latter phenomenon itself is nothing but the outflow of an archaic collectivity that still sticks to people. This collectivity seduces us into the erroneous belief that the other will take the same delight in being used as I do in using him. This naive assumption, which is rooted in collectivity, necessarily leads to mutual fleecing and violating. Although this a priori identity with the object results in an increased adaptation to outer reality, even to the point that we can speak of a worldwide “cultural thought,” there is no real advantage in this, neither for a nation nor for the individual, because they both get equalized and lose their intrinsic values. The leveling-out of all external opposites produces big newspapers, excellent railway timetables, fast connections by steamship, international industrial and commercial organizations, and a division of labor that is carried to the extreme. But all of this makes man, who is not a machine but many-sided, sick. The opposites should be evened out in the individual himself. True, this will not lead to a general “standard,” to a universal ideal of the arts or the sciences, or of production of all kinds; what will emerge is what is generally not accepted but individually valuable, what is internationally regarded as quaint or funny but is nationally valued and alive. For man is not only a herd animal obeying a universal rule but also a “strange” being. It is not only the rational truth of the herd that is vital to him but above all his irrational strangeness, the vital value of which is denied by any outsider, but which is perfectly and immediately evident to the individual; after all, this is what is his very own and his inner vitality! It is not the sameness of nations and individuals, but their extreme diversity and singularity, which is valuable and beautiful in them. With the spirit of international modernity, which is rooted in precisely those vestiges of archaic collectivity, we shall experience the building of a second tower of Babel, which as we know ends in a confusion of tongues. In this way nature helps herself, so that everybody will arrive at what is his own, and though it may, or should, be incomprehensible to the other, it still has the greatest vital value. This is the irrational truth.
I see adaptation to reality in the same way as Fr. Th. [Fried-rich Theodor] Vischer views morality, that is, that it is always a matter of self-evidence. Since this adaptation is an endless problem, not constrained by any one side—for “reality” can be expanded interminably—we need some sort of standard, and this standard can be provided only by the subject, never by the object. Although the object can constrain us outwardly, it cannot do the thinking process, which sets norms and limits, for us. The moral law lies within ourselves, not in the object. I have to protect the object against too much experimenting. Even the Freudian way of analysis aims at a change in the subjective attitude, which is brought about by a subjective, psychological process, and not at predominantly experiencing the object and doing something with it.
Experiencing much with the help of the object, however, is tantamount to bringing infantile fantasies into what is concrete. But infantile fantasy is not suited for this, for when it is transferred into the object it becomes the most worthless and objectionable thing, while when being kept within the subject it becomes what is most valuable, namely, the source of anything new and of further development.
The striving for the creation of impersonal values deprives the introvert of a considerable sum of energy in the development of his personality, so that he, just as much as the extravert, in a certain sense falls behind himself (though in the opposite way than the extravert). We must never forget that both types always contain both mechanisms, so that they would be identical, so to speak, if not for the fact that they are completely opposed.
What is certain is that the extravert’s abstract feeling does not really love the object, but merely desires it. You prove this yourself by your statement that for the extravert the object is indispensable for his feeling. Calves and pigs are indispensable for satisfying our hunger, but they would challenge that we love them, for they probably feel quite roughly treated when we lovingly prepare them for a meal. Because of his deficient sensation the extravert believes that his object is naturally delighted by getting his “love,” just as he himself is gratified by achieving the fulfillment of his wish. The feeling of the extravert corresponds to outer reality; calves and pigs are really there to be eaten. The one uses the other, the one devours the other, by cunning and force everybody fights for his place in the sun. And if he does not do it consciously, he does it unconsciously, and then claims that this is love, and he can claim this so long as he senses and feels deficiently. His object, however, does not feel loved at all. The teacher completely ruins the situation for herself, because she senses nothing and thinks nothing, but merely “loves,” and because the students are indispensable for her feeling. Even though she may have correctly recognized the spirit of outer reality, and of the struggle for life, in her feeling, she still does not recognize the powers of the interior, the power, that is, of her students’ sensation and thinking. The students are not cattle for slaughter but human beings who are also struggling for their place in the sun. So I’m saying: precisely because the feeling of the extravert does not correspond to his own inner world (where there is sensation and thinking) but to outer reality with its merciless struggle for life, it is unconsciously completely steeped in the spirit of usurpation and violation. The abstract thinking of the introvert is a parallel to this. It is so much in accordance with outer reality that unconsciously it is completely saturated with, and contingent upon, the lusting for power in the world. We only have to remind ourselves of how pretentious certain philosophical systems act! Naturally the introvert tries to keep his feeling away from his thinking, but this is exactly why, eventually, it will nonetheless find its way into his thinking, in the form of lust for power, where it will occasionally break through with overwhelming force, as in Zarathustra, for example.
It is not feeling and representation that lead to inner reality in the extravert, but only thinking and sensation. Vice versa, for the introvert thinking and sensation lead to the outer world, while feeling and representation lead to inner reality.
It is altogether characteristic of the extravert that he never experiences the conflict in question as irreconcilable, or even tragic, for the simple reason that he does not think, and sense, the object sufficiently enough. He forces the object to fight against that “love” as violently as this “love” is violent itself, because unconsciously he tyrannically takes possession of the object and can neither sense nor think how the object inwardly resists this. A strong and healthy man, who can put up with tastelessness and brutality, and who would rather kill the other than let himself be killed, will enter into this fight to the advantage of both sides. A sensitive and aesthetic man, who cannot put up with brutality, will not enter into this fight, to his and his partner’s detriment. And that is tragic. That is why I speak of the possibility of a tragic misunderstanding. On the other hand, we must admire how well nature has arranged this, too. The extravert forces the introvert, through the blindness of his love, to summon in self-defense all the violence and brutality from the depths of his soul, which he so desperately needs in his struggle for life. The energetic resistance of the introvert forces the extravert, in turn, to realize all the shortcomings of his thinking and sensation, which had hampered him in the fight for adaptation in that they prevented him from intellectually grasping the situation adequately.
The introvert has a reactive type of loving but an active type of thinking. The extravert has a reactive type of thinking but an active type of loving. A person’s energy is always revealed by his activity. That is his light; his shadow lies in his reactions. So according to the tenor of your last letter, the goal toward which we are moving would promise nothing less than that the shadow will turn into light. With regard to physics, however, we also have to consider our energy balance and its requirements. Is human energy really strong enough, besides maintaining the light it has already created, to turn the shadow into light? I fear we might be on the road to godlikeness, or at least about to create that completely spherical Platonic primordial being, whom, as we know, a god found it necessary to divide into two. If we continue to pursue this road, namely, of compensating ourselves by our own unconscious opposite, we will arrive at fatal mythological analogies, one of which I have already mentioned. For if we succeeded in activating even our shadow, and thereby bring about an all-sided or two-sided activity in ourselves, the shadow of the god would threaten to cut us in two, as it did with Plato’s orbicular and perfectly equipped primordial being. As you know, this Platonic myth is a later echo of the earlier, widespread original idea of the first pair of parents, who were pressed together, like a single being, for eons, all-round and positive, until one day a son arose between them, who, to their surprise, separated them. Just as light and shadow always follow one another, positive and negative electricity always attract each other. Two positive charges repel each other, however. Thus we, too, might find that our activated, luminous shadow will suddenly separate itself from our actual light, as if it were repelled by an invisible power that interposes itself between the two centers of activity like a new shadow.
Naturally, this possibility arises only if we assume that it is at all possible to activate the shadow as well. Well, why shouldn’t it be possible to raise the merely reactive side in our nature to activity? We are bound, however, to our energy balance. The energy we need to activate the shadow must necessarily be withdrawn from somewhere else. And it can be withdrawn only from a place where energy can be found, that is, from thinking for the introvert, and from feeling for the extravert. Through the withdrawal of energy the active qualities are reduced to the level of a certain dullness. We believe we can see something of the sort in certain oriental psychologies of religion, in which it is precisely the recognition of the shadow that led to the harmonization and leveling-out of the psychological opposites. The legend of the life of Buddha bears testimony to this. And what insights in this respect do we not owe to the superior mind of Lao Tzu!
272 In Iselin: es = it. Very probably either a writing error of Jung’s, or an error in the transcription, for er = he (see the almost identical passage in 1 J).
Jung’s Obituary of Hans Schmid-Guisan
HANS SCHMID-GUISAN: IN MEMORIAM273
Life is in truth a battle, in which friends and faithful companions-in-arms sink away, struck by the wayward bullet. Sorrowfully I see the passing of a comrade, who for more than twenty years shared with me the experiment of life and the adventure of the modern spirit.
I first met Hans Schmid-Guisan at a conference of psychiatrists in Lausanne, where I discussed for the first time the impersonal, collective nature of psychic symbols. He was then assistant physician at the Mahaim Clinic in Cery. Not long afterward he came to Zurich, in order to study analytical psychology with me. This collaborative effort gradually broadened into a friendly relationship, and the problems of psychological practice frequently brought us together in serious work or round a convivial table. At that time we were especially interested in the question of the relativity of psychological judgments, or, in other words, the influence of temperament on the formation of psychological concepts. As it turned out, he developed instinctively an attitude type which was the direct opposite of my own. This difference led to a long and lively correspondence, thanks to which I was able to clear up a number of fundamental questions. The results are set forth in my book on types.
I remember a highly enjoyable bicycle tour which took us to Ravenna, where we rode along the sand through the waves of the sea. This tour was a continual discussion which lasted from coffee in the morning, all through the dust of the Lombardy roads, to the round-bellied bottle of Chianti in the evening, and continued even in our dreams. He stood the test of this journey: he was a good companion and always remained so. He battled valiantly with the hydra of psychotherapy and did his best to inculcate into his patients the same humanity for which he strove as an ideal. He never actually made a name for himself in the scientific world, but shortly before his death he had the pleasure of finding a publisher for his book Tag und Nacht, in which he set down many of his experiences in a form peculiarly his own. Faithful to his convictions, he wrote it as he felt he had to write it, pandering to nobody’s prejudices. His humanity and his sensitive psychological understanding were not gifts that dropped down from heaven but the fruit of unending work on his own soul. Not only relatives and friends stand mourning today by his bier, but countless people for whom he opened the treasure-house of the psyche. They know what this means to them in a time of spiritual drought.
273 First published in the Basler Nachrichten, 25 April 1932. Reprinted here in the translation as published in the Collected Works, vol. 18, pp. 760–61.