THE CONDUCT OF extraverts is based on the outer situation. If they are thinkers, they tend to criticize or analyze or organize it; feeling types may champion it, protest against it, or try to mitigate it; sensing types may enjoy it, use it, or good naturedly put up with it; and intuitives tend to try to change it. In any case, the extravert starts with the outer situation.
The introvert, however, starts farther back—with the inner ideas, the mental concepts, derived from what Jung calls the archetypes. Type theory holds that the archetypes are inborn in us all. They do not have their origin in our own experience, though personal experience may activate them. They are the abstract essence of the experience and aspiration of humanity. They are the universals, the shapes of thought, which bring pattern and meaning out of the overwhelming multiplicity of life. (Extraverts find multiplicity rather jolly; but it can be intolerably distracting to introverts unless they can see a unifying meaning that brings it under control.)
When an outer situation encountered by introverts corresponds to a familiar idea or concept, they meet the situation with a sense of recognition, as though seeing a good illustration of something long known. For such situations the introverts have a profound understanding. If, however, the outer situation does not correspond at all to familiar concepts, it may seem accidental, irrelevant, and unimportant, and the introverts are very likely to mishandle it. One historic example is Woodrow Wilson’s blindness at Versailles, when he staked the peace upon the League of Nations, a decision that his own country was not ready to accept. He was too wrapped up in the idea of world organization to give the idea of democratic process its due—so the Senate seemed irrelevant to him, and he failed.
Because introverts’ energies are powerfully directed by their ideas, it is supremely important for introverts to have the “right idea” about things. Their characteristic pause before action, which extraverts carelessly call hesitation, serves a real purpose. It gives time to study and classify a new situation so the action taken will make sense in the long run. Problems arise for the introverts because they often do not look closely enough at the outer situation and, therefore, do not really see it. The extraverts often do not stop looking at the specific situation long enough to see the underlying idea.
The advantages of starting with the outer situation are obvious and much esteemed in the present Western civilization, which is dominated by the extravert viewpoint. There are plenty of reasons for this domination: Extraverts are more vocal than introverts; they are more numerous, apparently in the ratio of three to one;6 and they are accessible and understandable, whereas the introverts are not readily understandable, even to each other, and are likely to be thoroughly incomprehensible to the extraverts.
Consequently, the introverts’ advantages need to be pointed out—not only to the extraverts but sometimes even to the introverts themselves—for the best-adjusted people are the “psychologically patriotic,” who are glad to be what they are. The ablest introverts achieve a fine facility at extraversion, but never try to be extraverts. Through good development of an auxiliary process, they have learned to deal competently with the outer world without pledging any allegiance to it. Their loyalty goes to their own inner principle and derives from it a secure and unshakable orientation to life.
One advantage of the introverts is their inherent continuity, an independence of the momentary outward situation, which often is as accidental as it seems to them. Outer conditions and stimuli continually vary, but inner stimuli are far more constant. Introvert children, entirely ignoring many of the distracting outer stimuli, follow their own quiet bent, and parents of restless little extraverts marvel at the introverts’ “powers of concentration.”
This faculty of concentration is likely to characterize the introverts’ careers. Whereas extraverts tend to broaden the sphere of their work, to present their products early (and often) to the world, to make themselves known to a wide circle, and to multiply relationships and activities, the introvert takes the opposite approach. Going more deeply into their work, introverts are reluctant to call it finished and publish it, and when they do, they tend to give only their conclusions, without the details of what they did. This impersonal brevity of communication narrows their audience and fame, but saves them from overwhelming external demands and allows them to return to another uninterrupted stretch of work. As Jung is reported to have said, the introverts’ activity thereby gains in depth and their labor has lasting value.
Another useful aspect of the detachment characteristic of introverts is that they are little affected by the absence of encouragement. If they believe in what they are doing, they can work happily for a long time without reassurance, as pioneers usually must. Such behavior does not make sense to most extraverts. One brilliant and very extraverted young woman (an ENTP) protested, “But I’m never sure whether my work is good or not until I know what other people think of it!”
Finally, although extraverts certainly have more worldly wisdom and a better sense of expediency, introverts have a corresponding advantage in unworldly wisdom. They are closer to the eternal truths. The contrast is especially apparent when an extravert and an introvert are brought up side by side in the same family. The introvert child is often able to grasp and accept a moral principle—“yours and mine,” for example—in its abstract form. The extravert child is usually unimpressed by the abstract principle, and usually must experience it; then, having learned the hard way what others think, the extravert has a basis for conduct.
The contrasting traits resulting from the EI preference are summarized here in parallel columns in Figure 24. In general, these differences distinguish people in the lower half of the Type Table from those in the upper half.
Introverted Types | |
The afterthinkers. Cannot understand life until they have lived it. | The forethinkers. Cannot live life until they understand it. |
Attitude relaxed and confident. They expect the waters to prove shallow, and plunge readily into new and untried experiences. | Attitude reserved and questioning. They expect the waters to prove deep, and pause to take soundings in the new and untried. |
Minds outwardly directed, interest and attention following objective happenings, primarily those of the immediate environment. Their real world therefore is the outer world of people and things. | Minds inwardly directed, frequently unaware of the objective environment, interest and attention being engrossed by inner events. Their real world therefore is the inner world of ideas and understanding. |
The civilizing genius, the people of action and practical achievement, who go from doing to considering back to doing. | The cultural genius, the people of ideas and abstract invention, who go from considering to doing and back to considering. |
Conduct in essential matters is always governed by objective conditions. | Conduct in essential matters is always governed by subjective values. |
Spend themselves lavishly upon external claims and conditions which to them constitute life. | Defend themselves as far as possible against external claims and conditions in favor of the inner life. |
Understandable and accessible, often sociable, more at home in the world of people and things than in the world of ideas. | Subtle and impenetrable, often taciturn and shy, more at home in the world of ideas than in the world of people and things. |
Expansive and less impassioned, they unload their emotions as they go along. | Intense and passionate, they bottle up their emotions and guard them carefully as high explosives. |
Typical weakness lies in a tendency toward intellectual superficiality, very conspicuous in extreme types. | Typical weakness lies in a tendency toward impracticality, very conspicuous in extreme types. |
Health and wholesomeness depend upon a reasonable development of balancing introversion. | Health and wholesomeness depend upon a reasonable development of balancing extraversion. |
Freud | Jung |
Darwin | Einstein |
Roosevelt (both Theodore and | Lincoln |
Franklin Delano) |
Figure 24 Effect of the EI Preference
Source of Figures 24–31: the notes of Katharine C. Briggs