In the foregoing descriptions I have no desire to give my readers the impression that such pure types occur at all frequently in actual practice. (1923, p. 513)CHAPTER 1 PRESENTS the type theory in a less abstruse form than Jung employed in his Psychological Types and states the theory in terms of the everyday aspects seen in well-balanced people. In addition to their dominant process, such people have an auxiliary developed well enough to provide a balance between judgment and perception and between extraversion and introversion. Nowhere in Jung’s book does he describe these normal, balanced types with an auxiliary process at their disposal. He portrays each process in sharpest focus and with maximum contrast between its extraverted and introverted forms; consequently, he describes the rare, theoretically “pure” types, who have little or no development of the auxiliary.
Jung’s approach has several unfortunate effects. By ignoring the auxiliary, he bypasses the combinations of perception and judgment and their broad categories of interest in business, people, language, and science. The results of these combinations—the everyday forms in which the types are met—are dismissed in seven lines on page 515 (see page 19 of this book). Consequently, other researchers, who have reinvented the categories under different names, were unaware of the parallels between their findings and Jung’s theories.
Another serious result of ignoring the auxiliary process is the distorted descriptions of the individual introvert types. These types depend on the auxiliary for their extraversion, that is, for their outer personalities, their communication with the world, and their means of taking action. To portray them with no auxiliary is to portray them with no extraversion—unable to communicate, to use their insights, or to have any impact on the outer world.
In view of Jung’s deep appreciation of the introverts’ value, it is ironical that he lets his passion for the abstract betray him into concentrating on cases of “pure” introversion. He not only describes people with no extraversion at all, but seems to present them as typical of introverts in general. By failing to convey that introverts with a good auxiliary are effective and play an indispensable part in the world, he opens the door for a general misunderstanding of his theory. Many people so completely misunderstood it that they took the basic extravert-introvert difference to be a difference in adjustment instead of a legitimate choice of orientation.
Few of Jung’s readers appear to have realized that his type concepts had a bearing on the familiar daily problems of educating people, counseling them, employing them, communicating with them, and living in the same family with them. For decades, therefore, the practical utility of his theory went unexplored.
To be useful, a personality theory must portray and explain people as they are. Jung’s theory must, therefore, be extended to include the following three essentials.
The first requisite for balance is development of the auxiliary process in support of the dominant process. Jung does not mention the auxiliary process in Psychological Types until page 513, after all his descriptions of the types.
In the foregoing descriptions I have no desire to give my readers the impression that such pure types occur at all frequently in actual practice. (1923, p. 513)
In conjunction with the most differentiated function, another function of secondary importance, and therefore of inferior differentiation in consciousness, is constantly present, and is a relatively determining factor. (1923, p. 513)
Experience shows that the secondary function is always one whose nature is different from, though not antagonistic to, the leading function: Thus, for example, thinking, as primary function, can readily pair with intuition as auxiliary, or indeed equally well with sensation, but…never with feeling. (1923, p. 515)
The characteristics that result from these combinations, as outlined in Chapter 1, provide perhaps the most easily recognized aspect of type. All Jung writes about them is the following:
From these combinations well-known pictures arise, the practical intellect for instance paired with sensation, the speculative intellect breaking through with intuition, the artistic intuition which selects and presents its images by means of feeling judgment, the philosophical intuition which, in league with a vigorous intellect, translates its vision into the sphere of comprehensible thought, and so forth. (1923, p. 515)
The basic principle that the auxiliary provides needed extraversion for the introverts and needed introversion for the extraverts is vitally important. The extraverts’ auxiliary gives them access to their own inner life and to the world of ideas; the introverts’ auxiliary gives them a means to adapt to the world of action and to deal with it effectively.
Jung’s only allusions to this fact are cryptically brief. As a result, almost all his followers except van der Hoop seem to miss the principle involved. They assume that the two most developed processes are used in the favorite sphere (both extraverted or both introverted) and that the other sphere is left to the mercy of the two inferior processes. Jung writes:
For all the types appearing in practice, the principle holds good that besides the conscious main function there is also a relatively unconscious, auxiliary function which is in every respect different from the nature of the main function. (1923, p. 515)
The operative words are “in every respect.” If the auxiliary process differs from the dominant process in every respect, it cannot be introverted where the dominant process is introverted. It has to be extraverted if the dominant process is introverted, and introverted if the dominant process is extraverted.1 This interpretation is confirmed by Jung in two other sentences, the first about the introvert thinker, the second about the extravert.
The relatively unconscious functions of feeling, intuition and sensation, which counterbalance introverted thinking, are inferior in quality and have a primitive, extraverted character. (1923, p. 489)
When the mechanism of extraversion predominates… the most highly differentiated function has a constantly extraverted application, while the inferior functions are found in the service of introversion. (1923, p. 426)2
The conclusion that the auxiliary process takes care of the extraversion of the introvert and the introversion of the extravert is confirmed by observation. In any well-balanced introvert, the observer can see that the extraverting is carried on by the auxiliary process. For example, ISTJ people (introverted sensing types preferring thinking to feeling as auxiliary) normally run their outer life with their second-best process, thinking, so it is conducted with impersonal system and order. They do not leave it to their third-best process, feeling, as they would have to do if both their sensing and their thinking were introverted. Similarly, INFP people (introverted feeling types preferring intuition to sensing as auxiliary) normally run their outer life with their second-best process, their intuition, so their outer life is characterized by spurts and projects and enthusiasm. They do not leave it to their third-best process, sensing, as they would have to do if both their feeling and their intuition were introverted.
A more subtle kind of evidence lies in the “extraverted character” of the introvert’s auxiliary process. For example, in a well-balanced ISTJ the observable auxiliary process, thinking, can be seen to resemble the thinking of the extraverted thinker more than that of the introverted thinker. This point can be tested with any introvert by comparing the auxiliary process with Chapter 8, Figures 28–31, where the differences between extraverted and introverted thinking, extraverted and introverted feeling, etc., are shown.
Good type development thus demands that the auxiliary supplement the dominant process in two respects. It must supply a useful degree of balance not only between perception and judgment but also between extraversion and introversion. When it fails to do so it leaves the individual literally “unbalanced,” retreating into the preferred world and consciously or unconsciously afraid of the other world. Such cases do occur and may seem to support the widespread assumption among Jungian analysts that the dominant and auxiliary are naturally both extraverted or both introverted; but such cases are not the norm: They are instances of insufficient use and development of the auxiliary. To live happily and effectively in both worlds, people need a balancing auxiliary that will make it possible to adapt in both directions—to the world around them and to their inner selves.
When the auxiliary process is taken into consideration, it splits each of Jung’s types into two. Instead of merely the introverted thinker, there are the introverted thinker with sensing and the introverted thinker with intuition. Thus there are sixteen types in place of Jung’s eight. Sixteen would be an unwieldy number to keep in mind if the types were arbitrary, unrelated categories, but each is the logical result of its own preferences and is closely related to other types that share some of those preferences. (The relationships can be visualized logically and easily through familiarity with the Type Table in Chapter 3, Figure 2.)
To attempt to determine a person’s type by observation, it is unnecessary to consider all sixteen possibilities at once. Any preference that seems reasonably certain will reduce the possibilities by half. For example, any introvert belongs to one of the eight introvert types. An intuitive introvert belongs to one of the four IN types. If such a person prefers thinking to feeling, the type is refined further to INT. The final step, identification of the dominant process, will depend on the JP preference.
The JP preference completes the structure of type. As explained at the end of Chapter 1, this preference is indispensable for ascertaining which process is dominant. Students of Jung will not, however, find any reference to the JP preference in Psychological Types. Although he occasionally refers to judging and perceptive types among extraverts, Jung never mentions that the JP difference can be seen in introverts and that it reflects the character of their extraversion. This omission is inevitable because he never discusses the introvert’s extraversion.
Instead, Jung divides the types into rational and irrational; the “rational” types are those whose dominant process is thinking or feeling, and the “irrational” are those whose dominant process is sensing or intuition. This distinction is of little practical use in ascertaining a person’s type. The rationality of the introverted feeling type, for example, is too interior and subtle for the observer to perceive with any certainty, or even for the subject to report. It is safer to depend on relatively simple and accessible reactions.
The JP preference does show itself in simple and accessible reactions. It serves admirably as the fourth dichotomy if one detail is borne in mind: It deals only with outward behavior and thus points only indirectly to the dominant process of the introvert. The preference has three main advantages. It is easily ascertained; it is descriptive, embracing a number of conspicuous and important qualities; and it expresses a basic division in positive terms, without offense to either side. Both judging people and perceptive people can see merit in what they are, while to most people “irrational” is a fighting word.3
Inclusion of the JP preference in the theory came about as a result of unpublished personality research by Katharine C. Briggs before Jung’s Psychological Types was published. The type categories she had devised were entirely consistent with Jung’s, but less detailed. Her “meditative type” included all introvert types. Her “spontaneous type” corresponded to the perceptive extraverts, in whom perceptive behavior is at its strongest. Her “executive type” exactly described the extraverted thinkers, and her “sociable type” the extraverted feeling people.
When Jung’s theory was published in 1923, she saw that it went far beyond her own, and she made an intensive study of it. Putting together the sentences quoted earlier in this chapter, she interpreted them to mean that the auxiliary process runs the introvert’s outer life. She looked at the outer lives of her “meditative” friends to see if this was true and concluded that it was.
Briggs also found that when the introvert’s auxiliary was a perceptive process, it gave rise to a perceptive attitude and an outer personality that resembled, in a quiet way, the “spontaneous” personality of the perceptive extravert. When the auxiliary was a judging process, it produced a judging attitude and an outer personality that was the opposite of “spontaneous.”
Her own understanding of the “spontaneous” types had prepared her to recognize the perceptive attitude and the judging attitude—and the fact that they made a fourth pair of opposites. Inclusion of JP along with the other preferences, EI, SN, and TF, completed the system. The analyses she drew up at that time—summarizing the effects of each of these four preferences—provided, long afterward, the key to the practical determination of type.4
In all our subsequent work with type, Katharine Briggs and I have taken these four pairs of opposites as basic. We did not invent or discover them. They are inherent in Jung’s theory of the function types, which is based on many years of observations that seemed to him to synthesize already existing knowledge of personality. We have been less interested in defining the processes than in describing the consequences of each preference as far as we can observe or infer them, and in using the most accessible consequences (not the most important) to develop a means of identifying type.
Since the more superficial aspects of type are often the easiest to report, many trivial reactions are useful for identification, but these are merely straws to show which way the wind blows. They are not the wind. It would be a mistake to assume that the essence of an attitude or of a perceptive or judging process is defined by its trivial surface effects or by the test items that reflect it or by the words used to describe it. The essence of each of the four preferences is an observable reality.
It is easy for people to see that they have a choice of two worlds on which to concentrate their interest. One is an outer world where things happen outside individuals or “without” them, in both senses of the word, and the other is an inner world where the activity is within the individual’s mind, so that the individual is an inseparable part of all that goes on.
It will be apparent to people, too, though perhaps more clearly as applied to others rather than to themselves, that people have a choice of two attitudes in dealing with the outer world. They can perceive it with no inclination to judge it at the moment, or they can judge it without making any further effort at perception.
When people consider their own mental processes, it will be evident that more than one kind of perception is possible. People are certainly not limited to the direct report of their senses. Through the subtle messages of intuition people can also become aware of what might be or can be made to be.
Finally, people can see, at least in others, that there are two kinds of judgment, one by way of thinking and one by way of feeling. Everyone meets both daily, sometimes used appropriately and sometimes not.
The existence of the opposites is thus nothing new, as Jung himself points out. They are common knowledge, once people stop to think about them. The difficulty is, Jung notes, that they look quite different to different types. People of each type experience the opposites after their own fashion. Even with “perfect” knowledge of all sixteen points of view, it would still be impossible to define the opposites in terms that would satisfy everyone. However, when people waive formal definitions and consult instead the reality of their own experiences, they can agree that in each of the four areas just mentioned there is a choice of opposites that may be experienced, however the dichotomies are defined.
The new insight by which Jung synthesized such knowledge was the realization that an initial choice between these basic opposites determines the line of development for the person’s perception and judgment and thus has profound consequences in the field of personality. This magnificent idea makes possible a coherent explanation for a variety of simple human differences, for complexities of personality, and for widely different satisfactions and motivations. It also suggests an important new dimension in understanding the development of young people.
Jung saw his theory as an aid to self-understanding, but the application of the theory (like the theory itself) extends beyond the point where Jung was content to stop. The type concepts shed light on the way individuals perceive and judge and on the things that they value most; the type concepts are thus useful whenever one person must communicate with another or live with another or make decisions that affect another’s life.