Two Birds in a Tree: Glossary: Inferior Function

The inferior function is practically identical with the dark side of the human personality.
- Jung, “Concerning Rebirth,” CW 9i, par. 222

A person’s weakest function. The inferior function is always the opposite of the primary function (intuition if your primary function is sensation, thinking if it’s feeling, or vice versa). Not only is it the opposite function, it will also have the opposite attitude (introverted/extroverted). For example, if your primary function is extroverted intuition your inferior function will be introverted sensation. In other words, you will be good at sniffing out the “next big thing” but have a hard time dealing with practical concerns such as responsibility or one’s physical well-being.

As the primary function is the one that is the most conscious, the inferior function is the one that’s the most unconscious. The very state of differentiation of one function automatically pushes it’s opposite down into the unconscious. Imagine the four functions as a plate resting on the surface of the ocean; if you lift up one side, the other side automatically goes down into the water. Developing one function lifts it up into consciousness; this automatically pushes the opposite function down into the unconscious. For this reason, the inferior function is always the function that causes the most problems in one’s life. It expresses itself in the most primitive, archaic, and affect laden ways. And the more energy you pour into your superior function, the more starved for energy your inferior function becomes and the more unconscious it will become. This one-sidedness leads to ever more infantile and primitive expressions of the inferior function until you end up in neurosis.

The inferior function will always be an area of pain and shame in a person’s life, but we can learn to adapt to social expectations enough to muddle through our lives. For example, the extroverted intuitive can learn to get their act together and keep their bills paid and their home (relatively) clean… but it will never be as effortless as it is for other types. We can learn what Marie Louise von Franz calls “pseudo adaptations” – feeling types can memorize knowledge from books (but it will generally be the most conventional kind of thinking), and thinking types can learn what to do in different social situations (again, purely conventional manners) – but dealing with the fourth function will always be a challenge.

Pseudo-adaptations allow us to get through life but no matter how hard we try the inferior function always finds ways to trip us up, usually when we least expect it. It has an autonomous quality to it, as if we were stuck with a child, a wild animal, or a stupid and malicious prankster. It’s the part of us which is the closest to the unconscious and the least under ego’s control. As such, it's the “doorway” through which unconscious contents, including the Self, can come into our lives. The superior function may be our best way to survive in the world, but the inferior function is the doorway to meaning.

The inferior function is always of the same nature, rational or irrational, as the primary function: when thinking is most developed, the other rational function, feeling, is inferior; if sensation is dominant, then intuition, the other irrational function, is the fourth function, and so on. This accords with general experience: the thinker is tripped up by feeling values; the practical sensation type gets into a rut, blind to the possibilities seen by intuition; the feeling type is deaf to logical thinking; and the intuitive, at home in the inner world, runs afoul of concrete reality.

One may be aware of the perceptions or judgments associated with the inferior function, but these are generally over-ridden by the superior function. Thinking types, for example, do not give their feelings much weight. Sensation types have intuitions, but they are not motivated by them. Similarly, feeling types brush away disturbing thoughts and intuitives ignore what is right in front of them.

- Daryl Sharp, “Jung Lexicon”

To the extent that a person functions too one-sidedly, the inferior function becomes correspondingly primitive and troublesome. The overly dominant primary function takes energy away from the inferior function, which falls into the unconscious. There it is prone to be activated in an unnatural way, giving rise to infantile desires and other symptoms of imbalance. This is the situation in neurosis.

- Daryl Sharp, “Jung Lexicon”

Positive as well as negative occurrences can constellate the inferior counter-function. When this happens, sensitiveness appears. Sensitiveness is a sure sign of the presence of inferiority. This provides the psychological basis for discord and misunderstanding, not only as between two people, but also in ourselves. The essence of the inferior function is autonomy: it is independent, it attacks, it fascinates and so spins us about that we are no longer masters of ourselves and can no longer rightly distinguish between ourselves and others

- Jung, “The Problem of the Attitude-Type,” CW 7, par. 85

In order to extricate the inferior function from the unconscious by analysis, the unconscious fantasy formations that have now been activated must be brought to the surface. The conscious realization of these fantasies brings the inferior function to consciousness and makes further development possible.

- Jung, “The Problem of the Attitude-Type,” CW 7, par. 764

Our conscious realm is like a room with four doors, and it will be the fourth door by which the shadow, the animus, and the anima and the personification of the Self will come in. They will not enter as often through the other doors, which in a way is self-evident, because the inferior function is so close to the unconscious and remains so barbaric and inferior and undeveloped that it is naturally the weak spot in consciousness through which the figures of the unconscious can break in. In consciousness it is experienced as a weak spot, as that disagreeable thing which will never leave you in peace but always causes trouble, for every time you feel you have acquired a certain inner balance or inner standpoint, something happens from within or without to throw you off again, and it is always through that fourth door, which you cannot shut. You can keep the three doors of your inner room closed, but on the fourth door the lock does not work, and there, when you do not expect it, the unexpected will come in again. Thank God, you can say, for otherwise the whole life process would petrify and stagnate in a wrong kind of consciousness. It is the ever-bleeding wound of the conscious personality, but through it the unconscious can always come in and so enlarge the consciousness and bring forth new experience.

As long as you have not developed your other functions, your auxiliary functions, they too will be open doors, so in a person who has only developed one superior function, the two auxiliary functions will operate in the same way and will appear in personifications of the shadow, animus, and anima. It is only when you have succeeded in developing three functions, in locking three of your inner doors, that the problem of the fourth door still remains, for that is the one which is apparently not meant to be locked. There one has to succumb, one has to suffer defeat, in order to develop further.