THE BASIC TYPE differences appear as differences in interest, but the division goes very deep and rests on a natural tendency to develop in a particular direction and a natural desire for particular goals. Successful development in the natural direction yields not only effectiveness but emotional satisfaction and stability as well, whereas the thwarting of the natural development strikes at both ability and happiness.
If the direction of the development were entirely dependent on the environment, there would be nothing to be thwarted, but, in fact, a main hazard to good type development is the opposing pressure of environment.
The finest examples of type development result when children’s immediate environment encourages their native capacities. However, when an environment squarely conflicting with their capacities forces children to depend on unnatural processes or attitudes, the result is a falsification of type, which robs its victims of their real selves and makes them into inferior, frustrated copies of other people. The greater the original possibilities, the greater the frustration and strain of unfulfillment. Jung says that “as a rule, whenever such a falsification of type takes place as a result of external influence, the individual becomes neurotic later.... A reversal of type often proves exceedingly harmful to the physiological well-being of the organism, often provoking an acute state of exhaustion” (1923, p. 415).
If, in fact, some people are born without any inner disposition to be one type or another, then outer circumstances, one might conjecture, would have a free hand in determining which (if any) attitudes and processes would be developed. Western civilization has inclined men toward thinking, women toward feeling, and both sexes toward extraversion and the judging attitude. The pressure of outer circumstance itself would seem to be toward sensing. Thus, anyone who came into the world as a clean slate would be likely to be marked ESTJ or ESFJ fairly promptly by the collective slate pencil, which may explain why there are so many ESTJs and ESFJs in the general population.16
Against that view, type theory would argue that readiness to accept and enforce conformity is an essential part of the inner disposition of ESTJs and ESFJs. Thus, the prevalence of these types could be a cause, not a result, of some of the more materialistic social pressures of our times.
The less-frequent types find their infrequency an obstacle to their development. In the general population, there may be three extraverts to every introvert and three sensing types to every intuitive. Although the percentages of introverts and intuitives is much higher in college-bound and college-educated groups, outside these groups the introvert with intuition is about one in sixteen during the formative years of primary and secondary school (see Chapter 3, Figures 4 and 6). Unless the introverts with intuition are stoutly skeptical of the mass assumption that a difference is an inferiority, their faith in their type will diminish. They will not trust and exercise their preferences, which, accordingly, will not be developed enough to be beneficial. These people are thus cheated out of the successful undertakings that would give them faith in their type. Introverts with sensing, although less seriously outnumbered, are subject to much the same difficulty.
If parents understand and accept their children’s type, the children have a spot of firm ground to stand on and a place in which to be themselves. But if children suspect that their parents want them to be different—to go against their own type—then the children lose hope.
When parents have a little explicit knowledge of type they can give introvert children a new lease on life. The children will not find it a daunting undertaking to learn how to extravert when necessary if they know that they are always free to be introverts. Although children are far more vulnerable, even grown-ups can have their faith in their own type undermined by the beloved person who does not understand or accept it.
A more obvious hindrance to development is simple lack of opportunity to exercise the favored processes or attitudes. Unknowingly parents frequently refuse their children the conditions necessary for good type development: the young introverts who get no peace or privacy, the extraverts shut off from people and activity, the intuitives tied to routine matters of fact, the sensing children required to learn everything through words with nothing to see or handle, the young thinkers who are never given a reason or permitted an argument, the feeling types in a family where nobody cares for harmony, the judging types for whom all decisions are handed down by an excessively decisive parent, and the young perceptives who are never allowed to run and find out.
Lack of incentive often curtails type development. Growth is a stretching process, and children do not stretch their perception or their judgment until they try to do something well.
The moment children begin to take seriously the quality of their performance, they try to see into the situation or the problem as completely as possible. In so doing, children stretch their best perceiving process. If this process is sensing, they focus on the facts, and if it is intuition, they concentrate on canvassing the possibilities; either way they develop their perception. Then having seen as much as possible, they try to choose the soundest way of taking action, and this effort stretches their best judging process. If this process is thinking, they work to foresee the logical results of everything they might do. If it is feeling, they weigh the personal values involved—their own and other people’s. In either case, they develop their judgment.
None of this happens, however, unless children have good reason for wanting to do something well, which leads to the basic problem of motivation.