[4 June 1915]
Dear Friend,
As you know from our previous talks, for the past few years I have occupied myself with the question of psychological types,40 a problem as difficult as it is interesting. What originally led me to that problem were not intellectual presuppositions, but actual difficulties in my daily analytical work with my patients, as well as experiences I have had in my personal relations with other people. You remember that our earlier discussions about certain controversial points of analytical psychology,41 too, seemed to point, in our view, to the existence of two diametrically opposed types.42 At the time we took great pains to put the typical differences into words and, in so doing, discovered not only the extraordinary difficulty of such a project but also its tremendous importance for the psychology of human relations in general. Step by step, we realized that the scope of this problem took on extraordinary dimensions, so that, as is always the case in such situations, we somewhat lost courage and the hope that the problem could be dealt with at all.
For one thing we saw very clearly: the problem is not so much the intellectual difficulty of formulating the differences between the types in a logical way, but rather the acceptance of a viewpoint that is diametrically opposed to our own, and which essentially forces the problem of the existence of two kinds of truth upon us.43 Thus we arrived at a critical point of the greatest order, because we had to ask ourselves, in all seriousness, whether the existence of two kinds of truth is conceivable at all. Since we are both not professional philosophers, but at best mere dilettantes44 (and, being dilettantes, we love philosophy, in contrast to the professionals who practice it), this was a nearly hopeless problem for us, because viewing the world in the light of two truths seemed at least a highly daring acrobatic feat to us, for which our brains, insufficiently trained in this specialty, were hardly adequate.
I do not know how you have tried to come to terms with this. I would guess that you, true to your character, have simply gone ahead with your life, assuming that everybody can have his own personal views, views that can freely lead their own separate existence without disturbing the harmony of the world mechanism, even if they are not in accordance with other views. But as I am one of those people who must a priori always have a viewpoint before being able to enter into something, I could not be reassured by simply going ahead in my personal relations; to allay my concerns, I needed the points of view provided by the pragmatic movement in modern philosophy. Although I make no secret of my highest esteem for someone like Schiller45 or William James,46 I also have to confess that pragmatism leaves me with a somewhat stale feeling. I cannot help it: it is a bit “business-like.”47 It is a bit like my feelings concerning the saying, ubi bene, ibi patria,48 which I have never much liked either. As I belong to that category of people who never take the element of feeling sufficiently into account, as opposed to the intellect, it was necessary that I should not neglect to also ask my feeling for its opinion in this matter. A man of your kind, however, who is as much devoted to feeling as I am to the intellect, comes to the help, not of the intellect, but of the feeling in the other. And that is why it is to a thinker who probably belongs to your type—namely, the romantic, as Ostwald49 called him—to whom I owe a notion that freed me from that certain staleness of pragmatism. It was Bergson who gave me the notion of the irrational.50 What I like is the unmistakable hypostasization51 of this notion. As a consequence we get two intimately connected, mutually dependent principles: the rational and the irrational.52 It gives me pleasure to think of them as hypostatic, because then I can acknowledge their existence also morally. I think you will understand that I do not practice philosophy here but rather make psychological confessions to you, which cannot hurt even the specialist, because in psychology thoughts are toll free, being psychology themselves. We have long ceased to pride ourselves that we could rise above psychology by thinking. This latter viewpoint is one of the medieval privileges of our academies, hallowed by their venerable age. The Archimedean point outside of psychology, with the help of which we would be able to unhinge psychology, is hardly likely to be found.53
So (naturally) I called my viewpoint rational, and the viewpoint opposed to mine irrational. Thus, your viewpoint fell into the category of the irrational. As the irrational cannot be further understood at all, I came to the conclusion that one truth must remain unintelligible to the other. With this, I drew a thick line between you and me, because I also said to myself: you are as irrational to me as I am irrational to you. This would create a definitive but hopeless situation, satisfying for the intellect but depressing for the feeling. In this situation, I remembered that we are in possession of a very nice analytical method, which we use every day with our patients, and the excellent results of which basically consist in bringing together and balancing the antagonistic forces in the human soul, so that even the antagonism, which previously had an inhibiting effect, becomes a step leading one up in life.
Thus, when one of my patients dreams of a Herr Müller and then tells me during the analysis that this Herr Müller is a very disagreeable person, cantankerous in his moods and mudslinging, that he has always meddled with the patient’s life in a most annoying way, just like his father, who, overzealously concerned about his education, used to come between the patient and his wishes—I would say: “Sure it’s like that. You see, there are lots of people who do not achieve self-realization but always unload their demands and their own fantasies and fantasized wishes onto others, and get on their nerves, instead of minding their own business. Herr Müller is a good example of this kind, and so is your father, bless his soul. But why are you still irritated by this? After all, you are not married to Herr Müller, and your father has been dwelling in Elysium for nearly twenty years, from where he can hardly be expected to exert an annoying influence on the upper world. Unless, that is, his imago,54 the image of his memory in your fantasy, is still active. This effect is strongly reminiscent of that of a posthypnotic suggestion. But do you know which suggestions are most effective? Precisely those that suit us, even though we don’t always like to admit it. If suggestions, simply as such, were effective, as many people believe, the suggestion therapy of neuroses would really be a panacea. We have learned that this is not so, however. So both the imago and Herr Müller suit you very well, which is indeed annoying. In other words: they are apt expressions of one side of your personality, which you do not want to see. That is why you are irritated by the mote in your brother’s eye but not by the beam in your own eye.”55
As you know, we call this second viewpoint the interpretation of a dream on the subjective plane, while the first viewpoint, as outlined above, corresponds to an interpretation on the objective plane.56 Both viewpoints are in accord with the truth. Actually these are two truths, two different, but equally true, perceptions of one and the same situation. One truth says: it is he, while the other says: it is also I (but I do not want to see it).
I wrote above: you are irrational. But if I think analytically, I will say: and so am I (but I do not want to see it). For the rational is what is given in my consciousness, and what is comprehensible, while the irrational is what is present in my unconscious, and what is incomprehensible. Insofar as you, in accordance with your character, represent the feeling standpoint, while I call your standpoint irrational, I am actually projecting a judgement, which holds true only for me. You regard your feeling standpoint as rational; I regard my thinking standpoint as rational. But as I hold the thinking standpoint, I am not at the same time consciously holding the feeling standpoint, which for me, as a consequence, does not fall into the category of the rational but is of necessity irrational. For the same reasons, for you the thinking standpoint falls into the category of the irrational, because for you rationality is tied to the feeling standpoint. As is easily imaginable, the greatest misunderstandings may arise out of this situation, and, as you know, they actually did arise, and how! These are instructive experiences for those whose friendship withstands the heaviest blows, but sources of bitterness for those who are never able to yield to a different standpoint but always just accuse the others of not being able to yield themselves.
You will perhaps find it strangely intellectual when I tell you that I got rid of these difficulties by viewing things on the subjective plane. In this way I was able to realize that a different standpoint, which I cannot but call irrational, seems to be irrational only because this same standpoint is irrational in myself. For you it may be absolutely rational, however. I think this fact can be explained as follows: 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 into57 the object. 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.58 Naturally man, ever mindful of his role as Homo sapiens, tries to tame and control the irrational with the rational. As a consequence, the thinking person wants to force his feeling to serve his thinking, and the feeling person his thinking to serve his feeling. When I see this done by other people, it strikes me as completely absurd, because the other person does the very thing that most runs counter to my ideal. I call it childish and twisted. It is nearly impossible for me not to moralize about it. The stronger my ideal is, and the more I cherish it, the more I actually have to condemn the other, because he 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 caused by 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.
The two of them speak different languages, so that they often cannot understand each other at all. 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 representation59 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,60 as a rule of a reactive nature, and thus very concretistic, if not to say “physiological.”
I am leaving out here something we will have to discuss later.
With best regards,
your Jung
40 On the development of Jung’s thoughts on the question of psychological types prior to this correspondence, see the introduction.
41 On “analytical psychology,” see the introduction, note 22.
42 It is unclear when exactly these earlier discussions had taken place. They probably played a role in Schmid’s analysis with Jung (see the introduction and below).
43 This goes beyond Jung (1913a), where he had asserted only that in psychology these two types had led to the two different theories of Freud and Adler.
44 Manuscript [MS]: Dilettanten. Here used in a nonpejorative sense, that is, referring to amateurs, not professionally trained philosophers,.
45 Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller (1864–1937), the primary English representative of pragmatism at this time. In his Studies in Humanism, he had defined the principles of pragmatism as follows: (1) “truths are logical values,” (2) “the ‘truth’ of an assertion depends on its application,” (3) “the meaning of a rule lies in its application,” (4) “all meaning depends on purpose,” (5) “all mental life is purposive,” pragmatism must become (6) “a systematic protest against all ignoring of the purposiveness of actual knowing,” and as such it can be described as (7) “a conscious application to epistemology or logic of a teleological psychology, which implies, ultimately, a voluntaristic metaphysic” (2nd ed. 1912, reprint 2008, pp. 49–52).
46 William James (1841–1910), the famous American psychologist and philosopher. The basic notion of pragmatism, according to James, is to trace the “concrete consequence” of each of our beliefs (1907, p. 49; 1975 ed., p. 30). He had differentiated between the “tender-minded” rationalists and the “tough-minded” empiricists. “[H]e proposed pragmatism as a philosophy that could satisfy both types” of approach to life and resolve the different viewpoints “through invoking the pragmatic rule” and “weighing up the resultant practical implications of each position” (Shamdasani, 2003, p. 60; cf. Goodman, 1995, p. 55). Jung had first met James at Clark University in 1909 and paid him a visit the following year. In an unpublished chapter of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he states that they had had an “excellent rapport,” “that James was one of the most outstanding persons that he had ever met,” and that he became “a model” for him (in Shamdasani, 2003, p. 58). On James and Jung, see also Taylor, 1980.
47 The expression is in English in the original. For instance, James had famously written of “truth’s cash-value” (1907, p. 200).
48 The Latin is translated as, “Where I am at ease, there is my fatherland.”
49 Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932), Latvian-born physical chemist, Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1909. In his popular book, Große Männer [Great Men] (1909), he “makes the attempt to classify scientific men of genius and to formulate the laws governing their careers,” by dividing them into two types, the romanticists and the classicists. The classicists have “a low reaction velocity,” developing their ideas slowly and alone, with the result that the creativity of their contribution is usually recognized late, and the romanticists “a high one,” creating, through their enthusiasm for their own ideas, a large early following of associates and champions (Bancroft, 1910, p. 91). See also Simmer (1978) for a discussion of Ostwald’s typology.
50 In Creative Evolution, a work that attracted a wide popular following for the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941), the irrational is introduced under the notion of “disorder.” Bergson speaks of the need to include disorder in our mathematical models of how the universe is ordered, demonstrating that if we do so, we soon notice two kinds of order: willed order and the chaotic or capricious order dictated by chance, which is what we are referring to when we speak of “disorder” (Bergson, 1907, chap. 3). Jung held Bergson in high esteem. He remarked on 20 March 1914, that “Bergson … says everything that we have not said” (Minutes of the Association for Analytical Psychology, Psychological Club, Zurich, vol. 1, p. 57). A few months later, he noted that his own “constructive method” corresponded to Bergson’s “intuitive method” (in Jung, 1917b, p. 399). In a paper of 1916, Jung again underlined that “[w]e are particularly indebted to Bergson for having taken up the cudgels for the irrational’s right to exist” (1916a, § 483). Jung possessed the 1912 German translation of L’évolution creatrice.
51 Hypostasis, literally “that which stands beneath”: substance, basis; essential nature or underlying reality. Hypostasization: reification, objectification of a notion that exists only in the mind.
52 The terms “rational” and “irrational” are not yet being used here as they would be in Jung’s later typology, although his acknowledgement later in the letter that the feeling standpoint is also rational from the feeling person’s perspective is a step toward his eventual view that both thinking and feeling are “rational” functions (and sensation and intuition “irrational” ones).
53 “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth,” Archimedes is said to have exclaimed while analyzing the principle of the lever. Throughout his work, Jung stressed the importance of the fact that, in psychology, the observer and the observed coincide. See the introduction and note 24.
54 A term first introduced by Jung in the first part of Transformations and Symbols of the Libido. There he stated that the name was taken from the title of a novel (1906) by the Swiss writer Carl Spitteler, and from the ancient religious idea of imagines et lares (images/statues and tutelary gods of home/hearth) (1911/12, German ed., p. 164; also in CW 5, § 62 and note 5). In his Fordham Lectures in September 1912, he specified that a patient’s “love, admiration, resistance, hatred and rebelliousness still cling to the effigies” of the parents long after the latter have departed. “It was this fact that compelled me to speak no longer of ‘father’ and ‘mother’ but to employ instead the term ‘imago,’ because these fantasies are not concerned any more with the real father and mother but with subjective and often very distorted images of them” (Jung, 1913b, § 305). Also in 1912, Freud founded Imago, Journal for the Application of Psychoanalysis to the Humanities, equally named after Spitteler’s novel. The concept of “imago” in Jung’s sense was quickly and widely adopted in psychoanalytic circles.
55 Matthew 7:1–5.
56 Jung first mentioned the principle of dream interpretation on the subjective plane or level, without yet calling it so, in 1910 in “Psychic conflicts in a child” (an article based on a talk he had given at the Clark University Conference in 1909): “The principal protagonist in the dream is always the dreamer himself” (Jung, 1910, § 39). The first explicit mentioning of this distinction in the literature seems to be Alphonse Maeder’s talk at the Munich Congress in 1913 (the same, at which Jung delivered his paper on psychological types; see the introduction), in which Maeder expressly attributed this “excellent expression” and notion to Jung (Maeder, 1913, pp. 11, 13). Jung himself spoke about this in a discussion of dream interpretation on 30 January 1914, in the Zurich “Psychoanalytic Society (Society for Analytical Psychology),” at which Schmid was probably present (he contributed to the discussion when it was continued in the following session): On the subjective plane the “dream images do not reflect the relations between the dreamer and the persons seen in the dream, but they are an expression of tendencies within the dreamer” (Protokolle etc., 1913–16; our translation). Cf. the definitions in Psychological Types: “When I speak of interpreting a dream or fantasy on the objective level, I mean that the persons or situations appearing in it are referred to objectively as real persons or situations” (1921, § 779). “When I speak of interpreting a dream or fantasy on the subjective level, I mean that the persons or situations appearing in it refer to subjective factors entirely belonging to the subject’s own psyche” (ibid., § 812). In this letter Jung links introversion with a tendency to interpret on the subjective plane, and extraversion with a tendency to interpret on the objective plane.
57 MS: Einfühlung.
58 These formulations foreshadow Jung’s later differentiation between “superior” and “inferior” functions (cf. Jung, 1921; Definitions: Inferior Function).
59 MS: ein Vorstellen.
60 MS: eine Empfindung.