Freud vs. Jung

Let's imagine what you'd get if you went to see Jung. You'd certainly get somebody who knew he was a wounded healer. His ambitiousness, he knew about that. His crazy childhood, he knew about that. And I think he fashioned a really radical version of the therapy relationship out of these wounds. It was a much more equal relationship than the one that Freud established with his patients. It involved much more of a recognition that, in Jung's words, the doctor is in the treatment just as much as the patient is in the treatment. He said if anything positive happens in therapy it's because of the personality of the therapist not the techniques and theories. And modern therapists resonate with that. You heal because of who you are more than what you know and what you've been taught.

Your whole psychological life would be treated by Jung, responded to by Jung, very differently from the way Freud did. There's no on-high technical application of knowledge. There's no reading of the unconscious as a kind of bag of dirty tricks. And I mean dirty as in sexual repression, nasty, aggressive, destructive stuff. The unconscious is those things for Jung but it's also much more positive – a creative source that helps you live your life to its fullest extent possible. Your dreams are not attempts by your unconscious to deceive you. You can read your dreams much more easily in the Jungian vein than in the Freudian vein. If you dream about a king Freud might say, who is this king? If you dream about a king, for Jung he's going to say, which are the ruling or governing parts of your personality, where does your kingship reside? There's not an attempt to turn the images and symbols of the dream into something else.

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The idea of individuation is completely different from the idea of mental health or maturity. It is simply becoming yourself – different from other people, but never out of relationship with them. People often read Jung on individuation as saying you just have to become yourself. He doesn't say that. He says you have to become yourself in order to enter fully into relationships with other people. ...

There's a certain 'intelligence' in the unconscious from a Jungian perspective. You know what you need to do in life. The problem is there's a metaphorical wall or curtain between you and your knowledge of what you need to do in life. Therapy attempts to lift that. So, the solution is not found in the interpretations – based on knowledge – of the therapist or analyst. The solution is found within the subject, within the individual, who knew it all along, didn't know that they knew it, and can be helped to see that they do know it.

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[F]reud said maturity, like normality, were ideal fictions. And in a sense individuation is also an ideal fiction. We don't really talk about individuation anymore. We talk about individuating or the individuation processes or something like that. You can be quite mad and quite outside the social norms – quite a disreputable or idiosyncratic person – and be said to be individuating. It is very different from a kind of normative moralistic approach which I think is implicit in Freudian psychoanalysis – there's a right way to do sex, there's a right way to be aggressive, there's a right way to relate to people, and so on. That is missing in Jung's notion of individuation.

- Andrew Samuels, "In Our Time" (transcribed by Laura London)

What women want

I'm continuing to post amazing quotes while I work on other stuff. The below is from a highly recommended podcast of interviews with Jungian analysts by Laura London. This particular interview is with Russ Lockhart, one of my new Jungian heroes. Enjoy!

Russ Lockhart: (Said to Esther Harding at a party) "Freud asked the question 'What do women want?' and I want to know your answer."

And she was quiet for a bit, then she looked at me and then she put her hand on my shoulder and she said "Women want men... But there are so very few."

So that was like a one of those lightning bolts that go through one, you know? That pierces you and you know that that is a truth. And you’ve really got to take that into account, you know? Where are the men? What’s happened to the men?

Laura London: Well what do you have to say about that?... What did that comment mean to you?

RL: Well, it’s meant a lot to me in a lot of different things over the years. Certainly when I did the Jung lectures that became Psyche Speaks there’s a lot of material in that book that was prompted in a way by her comment. Later, as I thought more and more and more about it, it relates to this problem of power and how so consumed most men are with power. And the near absence of any real consideration we’re taking into account Eros. By Eros I don’t just mean females, I mean the genuine principle of relatedness is not very big on most men’s radar. Power is.

LL: What are they looking for in pursuing power?

RL: The solution or the cure for inadequacy.

LL: The solution or the cure for inadequacy.

RL: Yes.

LL: And they’re not finding it there. Or are they?

RL: No. No. They find all kinds of things, of course. There’s so much that reinforces that collectively and in the way other people respond to power that people enact, whether by rejection of that power (by the way rejecting power is not the same as Eros). Not having power is not the same as Eros. So Eros in that sense is not quite the opposite of power. The opposite of power is powerlessness. Eros is a completely different realm.

You might think of power as vertical, and if you think of power as vertical then there’s obviously all the symbolism of verticality is male oriented. Eros is horizontal. Much of the symbolism of the horizontal is feminine. So vertical power tends to be the enclave of the male. I’m not even going to say masculine, because I don’t feel like you can have a truly masculine quality or presence unless you have a relationship with Eros. And that’s what Esther Harding was saying.

Speaking of Jung podcast #16: Russ Lockhart, (1:11:40)

Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

- Jung, "On the Psychology of the Unconciousness"

Achieving peace

Yoko Ono's action for peace, like all other such actions, is beautiful but ineffective. The call for peace is the agonizing beauty of a lovely dream hovering over ugly reality. The dream of peace is real, but it's a mirage. It's not the enemy but the pointer towards the path to reach the goal. Peace is not now, but it may exist in our future if we do what is necessary for it. Political revolution is necessary, yes, but equally so is individuation.

Individuation sounds so abstract, a purely intellectual construct with nothing in reality. But it's the world of star and stone; the eternal, in comparison to the transitory world. The more people get free from possession, the more ability they have to achieve things of worth and meaning. The thing of worth and meaning for you may be simply becoming a little bit more yourself... or it may be world shaking. We each have our own task to accomplish, the failure of which is our great tragedy, the success of which adds it's incremental weight to the side of peace.


Article:
Yoko Ono Calls for Peace on the Anniversary of John Lennon's Death (Time Magazine)

The positive mother complex

I'm posting a quote because I wasn't able to finish today's post. Actually, posts - I have three different things I'm working on, and, because each is pulling at me, I'm running from one to the next like a hamster in a wheel. Especially after the last few weeks (and months) of very intense work on the MBTI and house symbolism posts. So here's a quote from one of my favorite writers, Marie Louise von Franz. The topic is actually related to some issues I've been wrestling with; namely, the inferior function and the animus/anima.

Enjoy!

Augustine’s new feeling attitude toward the Christian church stands opposed to the fact that he was first a fanatic opponent of the church. For an intellectual introvert, as he was, it meant a complete about-face. This is his imitatio Christi. After Ambrose’s allegoric instruction the restless pace began, until the inferior function broke through with great emotion; feeling overwhelmed him through its newness. Until then, as we have seen, his feeling had been hidden in the mother; this is typical for a mother’s son, and when feeling is in the keeping of the mother then all other women are present only for a vulgar biological affair. His intellect runs around alone. It is interesting that Augustine’s mother died so quickly after his conversion; had she become superfluous now that his feeling had found a higher mother image – the Ecclesia?

The mother-complex thread runs through the lives of many important men, giving them an inner feminine attitude which leaves them open to the contents of the unconscious. Such a man is a vessel for new ideas; he can follow a spiritual movement. We see from this that the mother complex in itself is nothing abnormal – Dante was guided to Paradise by Beatrice as a mother figure! It means rather an inner structure which can be lived in either a positive or a negative way.

- Marie Louise von Franz, Dreams, p. 9

Article: What Would C.G. Jung Say about Donald Trump

I'm just gonna put this right here:

Deeply wanting to take advantage of my good fortune, I try to connect by asking him if he can believe the insanity that is happening in the United States today. As if he recognizes what is playing out, Jung says, with the utmost assurance, that what is taking place is “brought about by an upheaval of forces lying dormant in the unconscious.” It is as if darker subterranean powers that have been brewing in the cauldron of the collective unconscious for centuries have been unleashed into our world.

I remember that in Jung’s view what distinguishes our age from all others is that we are being forced to recognize and come to terms with the active world-shaping powers of the psyche. As if hearing my thoughts, Jung comments that the psyche is “the World Power that vastly exceeds all other powers on earth.” Jung adds, “We can no longer deny that the dark stirrings of the unconscious are active powers.” This immediately makes me think of Jung’s well-known insight that if we don’t bring consciousness to the shadow forces within the psyche, we will then most assuredly dream up our inner unconscious situation to play out – destructively – on the world stage as our fate.
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Jung continues, “If ever there was a time when self-reflection was the absolutely necessary and only right thing, it is now, in our present catastrophic epoch.” Self-reflection, a privilege born of and intrinsic to human freedom, is a genuinely spiritual act – essentially the act of becoming conscious. He continues, “The true leaders of mankind are always those who are capable of self-reflection.” In self-reflection we recognize ourselves in the mirror of the world. As if amplifying my thoughts, Jung exclaims, “Yet, whoever reflects upon himself is bound to strike upon the frontiers of the unconscious, which contains what above all else he needs to know.” I love Jung’s idea that the unconscious, instead of simply being a repository of what we repress, contains what we need to know. My unconscious apparently contains the living figure of Jung.

As if reflecting upon my own self-reflection, Jung says, “Individual self-reflection, return of the individual to the ground of human nature, to his own deepest being with its individual and social destiny – here is the beginning of a cure for that blindness which reigns at the present hour.” Connecting with the innermost foundations of our being is like finding a safe refuge during these crazy times we are living through. “If things go wrong in the world,” Jung says, and then waits to make sure I am listening, “I shall put myself right first.” I certainly can’t argue with that.

- Paul Levy, "What Would C.G. Jung Say about Donald Trump" (Reality Sandwich)

Symbolism: House

“The Kitchen” Carl Larsson

“For our house is the corner of the world. As has often been said, it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word. If we look at it intimately, the humblest dwelling has beauty.”
- Symbolism.org(1)


I don’t know how many people dream about their home but this is a really common theme for me. Recently I dreamed that there was a room in my home that was like a theater around a rectangular pool; the pool was along one side of the room and there were seats on the other side of the room and to either side of the pool, as if the pool was a stage and the seats were for the audience. The entire room was also a foot or so deep in water – the water must have come up from the pool. My dream showed that the unconscious (the water) is in a somewhat one-sided (rectangular, as opposed to square) theater; I'm “doing” the unconscious – as if in theater – in this blog... but is this bad? Is it good? Is it just is what it is?


The house as a symbol for oneself

The most basic interpretation of the house is as a symbol for the personality; just as an individual lives in a house, so too does our “self” live in the personality. Each room in a home refers to a different part of us.

The kitchen is the place where sustenance is made by someone's hands, with their love; in the kitchen, raw ingredients are transformed into food which eventually becomes a part of us. We sit around the table with family as we are nourished. The bathroom is where you spend time with your shadow material; shit is for your “shit,” all the unpleasant tasks the unconscious pushes you to work through; urine is for personal and private but common embarrassing messes, your "human all too human" parts. The bed and bedroom are for getting information from the unconscious, or for the more hidden parts of you that specifically have to do with sex or aspects of the animus/anima.

There is the front of the house, the part of us that points outward, to the world; the back yard is our hidden playground. We store things in the attic as well as in the basement, but they are completely different places; one may be hot and stuffy – everything rises up there, on the current of hot air – but it’s high up, separate from and elevated from every day life. The basement is in the cool, ancient ground, in the dark, where things are buried.

When interpreting a dream house think about the condition of the house; is it new or old? Clean or messy? Luxurious or modest, or even a hovel? Does the action take place in the front yard (the persona), or the back yard (a more hidden part of the self)? The attic or deep in the basement, or maybe in one (or many) of the rooms? What’s your relationship with the house? Is it a new place that you’re moving into, possibly a new self on the horizon? Is it your childhood home? Are you regressing, or are you nostalgically visiting?


The house as refuge

The home is a place of safety, hidden and safe from the world. To be homeless is to be vulnerable, exposed to the elements and the vicissitudes of life. The walls of our house not only provide warmth and protection from the elements, it also gives us a place of privacy, where we can let down our guard, away from the judgments of others. We share our home with those we’ve decided we want to share our innermost secrets with; we only bring into our home those we’ve vetted, whether because they’re interesting or trustworthy depending on our desires.

Home is a place of belonging. This is probably especially true for people like me, who were constantly moved from place to place, and family member to family member. Others will look at you with pity or suspicion if you don’t have a home. Your house is where you surround yourself with things that express your inner being; the outer world may not see or validate you, but in your home you can express your truest self. A home is a place of one’s own.


The house as a feminine container

Home is deeply associated with the feminine principle; not only has it traditionally been seen as the main sphere of a woman’s power, a woman’s womb is itself our first “home.” Mary and other Great Mother goddesses are the garden in which the seed of Spirit takes root and becomes manifest in the world. Houses are a container, as woman is a container. It’s the body and the physical world, as opposed to the world of power (work) or intellect (education). The concerns of the home are the intimate concerns of family and the heart.

Her ambitions center on the family and her goals are a happy material and emotional life. These simple goals are often difficult to obtain, but she devotes herself to them. Though not necessarily rich in terms of money, she is always rich of heart, and she shares her wealth with all those in need.

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Generosity will become a priority, as will trustworthiness and reliability. You will gain insight into both matters of money and matters of the heart, and through these you can find a path to spiritual enlightenment. The Queen of Pentacles is, in many ways, a bridge between the worlds of the mundane and the spectacular. Step across that bridge once you are ready, and delight in the opulence and pure beauty. Then you can return to the material world to help others find their way. You may not be acknowledged, but you will never be unhappy either.

- “The Queen of Pentacles,” James Rioux (ATA)

Six in the second place means:
Contemplation through the crack of the door.
Furthering for the perseverance of a woman.

Through the crack of the door one has a limited outlook; one looks outward from within. One tends to relate everything to oneself... This is appropriate for a good housewife.

- Hexagram No. 20: Kuan/Contemplation (Deoxy.org)


Houses in fairy tales

Not surprisingly, houses are often associated with witches. From the chicken footed hut of Baba Yaga, to the mysterious and dangerous Frau Trude who turns impertinent little girls into logs of wood that she burns in her fireplace. These devouring old women are intimately associated with the home; sometimes they can be helpful, and sometimes they need to be cooked in their own fire.

Fire is traditionally the heart of the house, as the kitchen and it’s cooking fire are the heart of the home. Fire is destructive as well as transformative; the house holds the fire in a container, as the hearth holds and contains the fire, keeping it from burning down the house and thereby enabling it’s power to be used by us.

Homelessness is also a common theme in fairy tales; from Vasilisa who successfully avoids being killed by Baba Yaga; to Hansel and Gretel, who find the gingerbread house after being abandoned in the woods by their parents. Women in particular often have to leave home; abandoned by their family, they must make a perilous journey until they find a new home (usually in a castle, with a prince). The millers daughter in The Girl without Hands and the princess in All-Kinds-of-Fur are betrayed by their family, Sita by her husband Rama(2). A home stops being a home, and we have to brave many frightening tasks to find our new home.

Finally there are castles; castles in fairy tales are often an image of the Self. As the king and queen are exalted images of normal people, the castle is the exalted image of one’s “house.” As the Self, the castle is a precious, distant goal, like the Holy Grail. The image of the castle forms a temenos; an enclosing mandala made up of the four protective walls around the Center.

The most significant images in the story are those of the castle and the journey itself, and it is these that must draw our attention. The first is the castle, which Teresa described as being “composed entirely of diamonds, or very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in heaven there are many mansions.” She related this castle directly to the soul, making the symbolism clear, and placing the journey within the castle into the context of spiritual development. In later discussions with Fr. de Yepes, she clarified that her vision of this castle was of a globe with different “dwelling places,” the middle one being the residence of the “King of Glory.” It is within that center, the dwelling place of the King, that the self and God merge into mystical union, what Teresa called the spiritual marriage. The clarity of the castle symbol as soul and mandala and thus the purpose of the entire journey, is describing in mystical and metaphorical language the same process of individuation that Jung described psychologically.

- “A Sacred Marriage of the Imaginal: Jungian Individuation and the Christian Mysticism of Teresa of Avila,” James Liter (Temenos Center)


Two Jung house dreams

Two formative dreams of Jung’s featured houses. In the first one he dreamed he was in the upper story of “his house;” there was an elegant salon with Rococo style furniture and paintings by the old masters. Then he descended to the ground floor; there everything was much older, from the medieval era, dark and heavy. Then he found a door which lead even further down; he found himself in a vaulted stone room from Roman times. In one of the stone slabs on the floor he found an iron ring and lifted it up, proceeding even further down. At this point he came to the deepest part of his home; dusty, with broken pottery and the remains of two, half-disintegrated human skulls. He was still friends with Freud at this point and Freud, of course, interpreted the dream as a buried death wish. Jung disagreed but kept his opinion to himself.

The first floor, the one with the elegant salon, is a symbolic expression of how Jung views himself: elegant, civilized, retaining the best of the previous historical age. But as he goes deeper into himself, he finds there are more and more ancient parts of himself – the medieval and ancient Roman – until he gets to the bottom floor, the only one which is not man-made. Jung eventually came to the realization that the ancient, primitive cave was the collective layer of the unconscious; the place where the archaic figures of the unconscious, the archetypes, live.

To Jung, however, the house represented an image of his psyche. At the beginning of the dream he is on the first floor, in the salon, which represents to him normal consciousness. The remaining floors represent different levels of consciousness. The cave represents the most primitive level of all, the consciousness of primitive man, which still lies buried in our unconscious. It was but a short step for Jung to go from this analysis to his idea of a 'collective unconscious' — a common store of vague racial memories and archetypes. Jung thought that these archetypical images could surface in dreams.

- “Jung’s house dream reinterpreted,” Joe Griffin (Why Do We Dream)
[Note: Check out the link for a more detailed analysis of this dream]


The second dream was part of a series of dreams he had while he was looking for the connection bertween Gnosticism and the processes of the collective unconscious. He was sure there was some historical precedent for the ideas he was developing about the unconscious. He started dreaming a series of dreams about a mysterious annex that stood next to his house but that he couldn’t get to:

Beside my house stood another, that is to say, another wing or annex, which was strange to me. Each time I would wonder in my dream why I did not know this house, although it had apparently always been there. Finally came a dream in which I reached the other wing. I discovered there a wonderful library, dating largely from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Large, fat folio volumes bound in pigskin stood along the walls. Among them were a number of books embellished with copper engravings of a strange character, and illustrations containing curious symbols such as I had never seen before. At the time I did not know to what they referred; only much later did I recognize them as alchemical symbols. In the dream I was conscious only of the fascination exerted by them and by the entire library. It was a collection of incunabula and sixteenth-century prints.

The unknown wing of the house was part of my personality, an aspect of myself; it represented something that belonged to me but of which I was not yet conscious. It, and especially the library, referred to alchemy of which I was ignorant, but which I was soon to study. Some fifteen years later I had assembled a library very like the one in the dream.

- Memories, Dream, Reflections, CG Jung


The house is an ancient symbol that often appears in our dreams; the need for shelter is an age old one, one that still exists today. When we dream of a house it can mean many things; the feminine, the self, refuge from the elements or from our fellow human beings. The dream will point to the things we need to pay attention to through it’s choice of characteristics of or location in the house. A thorough understanding of this common symbol will help us to figure out what our unconscious is trying to tell us.

How you describe a house says much about the people who inhabit it. Is the house excruciatingly tidy and ordered, or appallingly messy and unhygienic? Is it packed to the rafters with dusty antiques that are slumbering away the centuries, or furnished spartanly with gleaming modern multifunction appliances every bit as young as the new century that birthed them? …

The answer to each question goes far beyond merely describing the house: it defines the people who inhabit the house…

- “Houses are People Too: The Structure of a Literary Device,” Geoff Hart

With the home foreclosure rate in America skyrocketing, our economic conditions translate into a true public health concern. Losing one’s home can feel like losing one’s self. Those being foreclosed upon can feel they have let down their families, that they have been “exposed” as failures in the eyes of the community and that the road back to stability is too full of twists and turns to even begin to think about navigating it.

- “The Emotional Meaning of Home,” Keith Ablow, M.D.

The nostalgia for the past and attempt to regain this past has given the idea of home the direction of searches or pilgrimmages throughout life. It has a similar symbolism of the Holy Grail Legend as something that was once lost and needs desperately to be regained. But like the Holy Grail, home remains an eternally elusive prey. Of course the search is a ultimately a futile one back into a past where the original home was.

The distance from "home" then is not always a matter of miles but is also a matter of time. The 1960s song "Homeward Bound" by Simon and Garfunkel is really about an attempt to return to this past time of innocence. The home they sing about is really America of the 1950s.

- “House And Home”

[T]he ultimate manifestations of private place in a world of public places… enclosed and protected space similar to the mother's womb. In fact it is the first place in each person's life. As an enclosed space it serves to shelter and protect from the outside world.

[S]imply a place where we can express a private and unguarded self in an increasingly public world. As sociologists might observe, the home provides a "backstage" and "private" set to our "public" performances in the workplace. Like the home of the original womb, they allow the private self to develop by escaping from the public world.”

- “House And Home”

Just like the city, the TEMPLE, the palace, and the MOUNTAIN, the house is one of the centers of the world. It is a sacred place, and it is an image of the universe. It parallels the sheltering aspect of the Great Mother, and it is the center of civilization. In Jungian psychology, what happens inside a house happens inside ourselves. Freudian psychology associates the house with the WOMAN, in a sexual sense; a house is undoubtedly a feminine symbol. Shelter and security are words commonly used surrounding house. Has a correspondence with the universe, the roof as heaven, the windows as deities and the body as the earth. The repository of all wisdom.

- “House” (Dictionary of symbolism)

It’s a very rich symbol, archetypal in fact.  Humans seek a secure place that is fundamentally their own in which to live, whether it is the troglodyte’s cave, or the King’s palace.

- “Jungian Therapy and the Meaning of Dreams : Houses,” Brian Collinson



Further reading:
House As a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home, Clare Cooper Marcus (2006)
The Encyclopedia of Magic and Alchemy, Rosemary Guiley (2006)


Posts:
"The Fate of Depth Psychology in the New Millennium"



(1) “House And Home,” (Symbolism.org)
(2) Sita Sings the Blues (An amazing and amusing one woman animated movie - free to watch, and well worth it!)


(Image from the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden)

The 4 ways of being playful

Here's yet another quaternity in human life. An interesting article popped up in my FaceBook feed; psychologists have apparently identified 4 different type of playfulness in adults.

The psychologist has identified four basic types of playful adults: "There are people who like to fool around with friends and acquaintances. We describe this as other-directed playfulness. By contrast, light-heartedly playful people regard their whole life as a type of game," says Proyer. Another category includes people who like to play with thoughts and ideas -- this describes intellectual playfulness. These people are able to turn monotonous tasks into something interesting. The psychologist describes the final group as being whimsically playful. "These people tend to be interested in strange and unusual things and are amused by small day-to-day observations."

Psychology: Playful people are at an advantage (ScienceDaily)


It's important to remember that the four functions aren't some kind of Platonic template that everything in our lives fits. A more accurate way to look at it is that there is a Platonic template for fourness in human psychology, and Jung's four psychological functions fit into that framework. However, while it's generally a bad idea to try to force every quaternity into the four functions, it seems to hold water in this instance.

The people who like to play with people are clearly primarily or secondarily feeling types, and those who like to play with ideas are clearly thinking types. I'm not sure about the other two; the people who regard their whole life as a game, and those who are interested in strange, unusual, and day to day things. My feeling is that the second is the sensation type (especially since sensation types tend to become fascinated by strange and spooky things, as their inferior function is intuition.) Intuitives, especially extroverted intuitives, seem to fit the final category; that of those who see their whole lives as a game. So, in this case it does seem to map onto the four functions!

It's pretty cool how Jung's ideas constantly pop up in our lives. Now if we could only get some researchers to see if there are any correlations between these things and Jung's functions!

Integrating the Four Functions

“That which we do not bring to consciousness appears in our lives as fate.”
- C.G. Jung


In Jungian psychology knowing what your "type" is isn't enough, you have to move through the functions, integrating them one by one. This is one of the main reasons why it isn't accurate to call these "types"; if one is actually individuating one's personality will change over the course of one's life as we integrate each function. This is, in fact, a large part of the individuation process itself.

Those who have only one function developed will be at the mercy of the unconscious as it comes in the three other "doors" (as Marie Louise von Franz puts it); the unconscious can catch us as it barges in, taking over our consciousness and making us do things that in retrospect may appall us. As we work to develop and differentiate each of the first three functions, we slowly shut the doors as we bring these functions under the control of the conscious ego. This continues on up to the third function. The fourth and final function, the inferior function, can never be brought under the control of the ego, allowing the unconscious a place to enter into our lives.

Below is a re-post of a an article from my previous blog:

The four functions aren't actually "types," unless people get stuck in a particular function. And then the Self will send neuroses in order to poke and prod at us until we get moving and growing. But in order to do so, we have to take a meandering path that snakes from our primary function to our auxiliary function, to the tertiary function, and finally to our inferior function. This whole process takes a very long time (we can finish it by the time we die, if we’re lucky) and it doesn't have to be particularly clear cut or even sequential, either. This is how we move around the circle, integrating the first three functions. When you integrate a function, you live that function, and all its strengths and weaknesses are yours.

The assimilation of functions is such a serious business that people generally spend a very long time in assimilating their auxiliary functions and sometimes, say for at least eight to ten years, become a type which was not their original type. I once, for example, knew a woman who was an introverted feeling type; that is, in the past she had been a feeling type, but in the stage at which we met, she had already switched the process to developing intuition and at that stage had as much trouble with her sensation as if she had been a genuine intuitive... [S]he went through all the crises of having to switch from intuition to sensation which you see with a primarily intuitive type; for example, she became completely inaccurate about facts and had trouble relating to them, exactly as an intuitive does. She then stated with great emphasis that it had always been an error to call her a feeling type, for she was an intuitive, but she was wrong! She was right and wrong for at the stage at which she was, she was exactly like an intuitive, but that was because she was at the stage of living in her second function and was just in the crisis of getting over to the third.

(von Franz, Psychotherapy, p. 131)

What seems to happen is your dominant function gets worn out from overuse; you get tired of using it and life gets sterile, lifeless; it feels meaningless. In my case I had a combination of fascination for things of the intuitive sphere and actual messages from dreams and the Tarot that pretty clearly told me it was time to move on . When we integrate another function we become that function - all of its strengths and weaknesses become ours. A feeling type that starts integrating sensation will have problems with flashes of sinister, and completely unfounded, suspicion. Or, as in my case, a thinking type moves to integrate intuition and can't balance her checkbook or keep her apartment clean if her life depended on it.

- Integrating the Four Functions (from Queen of the Night)


We're usually born with one function that is clearly our best function, along with a secondary function that's also pretty dependable. As we try to succeed in the world, we naturally lean on our strongest function(s), which develops them to a high level. At some point, though, this first function starts becoming fatigued; overuse makes it boring and sterile. Imagine playing the same game over and over, or watching the same movie over and over. It may be a lot of fun the first few times but eventually it's going to get boring and lifeless. In order to keep the juice flowing in our lives we need to start working on a new function. This often takes place during our middle years, when we have (hopefully) accomplished a large part of what had we set out to accomplish.


The Car Model (Personality Hacker)

Personality Hacker uses the image of a car with the driver and three passengers as a way to illustrate the way the four functions operate. The primary function (the "Driver") is the main cognitive function, the one we most strongly identify with, and the one with which we can get into what they call a "flow" state. It's the function in which we have competency that operates unconsciously; we're so good at it that we don't even have to think about it.

The auxiliary function (the "Co-Pilot") is the other function that we have or can develop competency at. We can get good at it but never as good as the Driver function; there will always be an element of conscious attention required when using this function

The tertiary function (the "10 Year Old") is one of our two weak functions. However, we do have a measure of control over it - we can eventually close the door here - therefore we'd say that it's the inferior function that we are conscious of. With conscious attention, we can, with some effort, bring it under the control of the ego.

The last function, the inferior function (the "3 Year Old"), is not and cannot ever be brought under the control of the ego. As with the Driver function, the 3 Year Old is also unconscious, but it's the function in which we have unconscious incompetence. As with a toddler, we can never bring it under our control.

(From Personality Hacker)

When we're still undeveloped our natural tendency is to go to the 10 Year Old, or the tertiary, function as our defense. This will be the function that we run to when we're scared, including when we're trying to avoid our growth function, the Co-Pilot. To develop, we need to move into the Co-Pilot function. Doing this balances out weaknesses in our primary function, while also keeping us from using the tertiary function defensively.

The people at Personality Hacker don't go too much into integrating the third function but, based on what I know of Jungian psychology, the third, or 10 Year Old, function will also eventually need to be integrated in a healthy, non-defensive way. From what I've seen, this seems to involve using the 3rd function as a kind of meditation. For example, an ESFP friend of mine goes to his thinking as a way bring his mind to a calm state. I've found the same thing; when I do physical work, like cooking or cleaning, with attention (my third function; introverted sensation) I find myself going into a meditative state.

The fourth and final function - the 3 Year Old in the Car Model - can never be integrated into consciousness. It will always act up, usually at the worst possible time. It's also the source of life and spontaneity, just like a 3 year old. The fourth function needs time and attention, and love. It will never easy to deal with, but with time, attention, and love, it will bring some of the greatest rewards into our lives.


Integrating the inferior function is, at root, shadow work. One's shadow is represented by the psyche as a person of the same sex as you but with the worst qualities of your inferior function, at least at first. This demonic figure often catches us from behind; when we're sick, tired, or in other states in which the control of our ego is weakened. It causes us to behave in ways we would normally find reprehensible, in the very opposite ways in which we like to view ourselves. Others around us are easily able to see our hypocrisies but they will remain hidden to us because we don't want to see them.

Integrating one's inferior function is about accepting one's own helplessness, weakness, stupidity, selfishness, and all the other human weaknesses that we all have. This is the moral work that that we have to carry out... and this is one of the main reasons why so few people undertake individuation. As you work on integrating the shadow/inferior function, however, this figure often expresses her/his better qualities, and you come to see that the dark adversary is actually an angel of light.

A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour.

- “The Philosophical Tree” (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335

The change of character brought about by the uprush of collective forces is amazing. A gentle and reasonable being can be transformed into a maniac or a savage beast. One is always inclined to lay the blame on external circumstances, but nothing could explode in us if it had not been there. As a matter of fact, we are constantly living on the edge of a volcano, and there is, so far as we know, no way of protecting ourselves from a possible outburst that will destroy everybody within reach. It is certainly a good thing to preach reason and common sense, but what if you have a lunatic asylum for an audience or a crowd in a collective frenzy? There is not much difference between them because the madman and the mob are both moved by impersonal, overwhelming forces.

- Psychology and Religion” (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.25

To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle.

- “Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology” (1959). In CW 10. Civilization in Transition. P.872



Further reading:
The Car Model (Personality Hacker)
When You ALMOST Know Your Personality Type (Personality Hacker)
Integrating the Inferior Function (Personality Junkie)


See also:
Primary function
Auxiliary function
Tertiary function
Inferior function
The shadow

The first step in integration: the auxiliary function

According to Joel Mark Witt and Antonia Dodge of Personality Hacker, one's auxiliary function is the key to personal growth. This fits in with the Jungian theory that individuation requires differentiating and integrating the four functions, beginning with the second function (assuming, of course, that you've developed the first). It seems that Jung's "first half of life" - the time where we work on success in the outer world; work, family, etc. - corresponds to the development of the first two functions. The second half of life - when one turns inward and works on spiritual growth - would correspond to working on the third and the impossible fourth function.

The first thing to work on will be the secondary, or auxiliary, function. In some ways it's easier for introverts to do this than it is for extroverts because that is the way that we extrovert. This is especially true since we live In a society that rewards extroversion and looks down on introversion. It is possible to go through life as an introvert and never really develop your second function but it's difficult and, quite honestly, sad. These are the people who find it nearly impossible to function in the world, staying alone in their room and never leaving, or never even leaving their childhood home (the proverbial anti-social person who lives in their parents' basement). Even if they do manage to live an independent life, they are painfully awkward whenever outside the safety of the known and familiar. But if introverts manage to go outside their safety zone, the part of themselves where they are strongest, they find that their world expands. For introverts to be happy and healthy, we need to go into our extroverted second function, no matter how awkward, or how scary, it may feel at first. Doing so is how we gain confidence in ourselves as paradoxical as it may seem.

Extroverts, on the other hand, may have a harder time of developing their secondary function in (large) part because it's introverted, and neither they nor the society around them value introversion. This is a negative feedback loop, as extroverts naturally tend not to value introversion, and additionally our society tells them that they're awesome as they are, and that introversion is for navel gazing loser hippies. Since extroverts are attuned to and tend to prioritize power and social status, this would probably just reinforce their aversion to going inside, to their "weak" side. For these reasons I would imagine that integrating their second function is more difficult for extroverts to do than introverts. Which isn't saying that integrating the second function isn't hard for introverts - it's damn hard! - but we have the benefit of being validated when we do, unlike extroverts.

And extroverts do suffer when they fail to develop their introverted function. The most obvious way is that not developing their second function leads to lowered effectiveness in achieving their goals. For example, an ENTJ who fails to develop their introverted intuition generally runs roughshod over all obstacles (up to and including other people). This not only makes their lives harder but, in doing so, they end up failing to inspire the people below them to put in their best work. Instead, they end up instigating passive or even overt resistance in the very people they rely upon to help them achieve their goal. This not actually efficient, the value that ENTJ's hold most dear; by prioritizing efficiency over everything else, even the wellbeing of subordinates and colleagues, the undeveloped ENTJ paradoxically undermines that very efficiency. Of course the same is true for one-sided introverts; whatever your goal is (i.e. accuracy for INTP's), you will always undermine or even destroy that goal if you fail to develop your auxiliary function.

The other negative result extroverts suffer when they don't develop their second function is that, whether they want to admit it or not, whether they even let themselves become aware of it or not, they too suffer when they don't live their softer side. Extroverts may like to think that they're super humans who are above all that mushy stuff but they are human, too, and full humanity always suffers when one side is cut off and shoved down into the shadow. It may be easier to see the suffering of one-sided introverts but the suffering of one-sided extroverts is no less real for being less visible. It may, in fact, be worse for being so unconscious. What is certain is that an extrovert who falls into neuroses is a pitiful sight, a kind of Greek tragedy, where their downfall is the result of their crippled personality. We're seeing that play performed on the national stage, as the deeply neurotic and damaged Donald Trump exposes his sickness for the entire world to see.


Link: Personality Hacker