MBTI: Working with the MBTI - Rebirth

Starry Night (Vincent van Gogh)

[Image from ArcGIS StoryMaps]

I can only gaze with wonder and awe at the depths and heights of our psychic nature. Its non-spatial universe conceals an untold abundance of images which have accumulated over millions of years of living development and become fixed in the organism. My consciousness is like an eye that penetrates to the most distant spaces, yet it is the psychic non-ego that fills them with non-spatial images. And these images are not pale shadows, but tremendously powerful psychic factors.

The most we may be able to do is misunderstand them, but we can never rob them of their power by denying them. Beside this picture, I would place the spectacle of the starry heavens at night, for the only equivalent of the universe within is the universe without; and just as I reach this world through the medium of the body, so I reach that world through the medium of the psyche.

~ C.G. Jung, (from Edward Hoffman's The Wisdom of Carl Jung)


I'm going to start by telling you something about me; in my profile I talk about how I've basically spent my entire life studying psychology, and there's a very good reason for this. It's because I was looking for a way to fix myself. I had a difficult childhood, was bounced from home to home and family member to family member. Though I didn't realize it (because I'm an INTP and don't really have access to my feelings) I never understood how much this wounded me until I was already well into adulthood, but I suffered. Between that and being an introvert in an extroverted culture that looks down on introversion (this was before being an introvert became trendy with the popularity Susan Cain's book Quiet) I felt that there was something fundamentally wrong with me and was desperate to fix it.

“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering”
― Carl Gustav Jung

I tried everything: individual therapy, group therapy, inner child work, affirmations, subliminal learning, neuro linguistic programming, and many more, too many to remember. I delved into Jung's work back in the 90's though it didn't “take” then. I had to wait until around 10 years ago for me to really get into it. By this time I had given up on psychology being able to do anything beyond very surface, psychological band-aids. No matter how many times you look in the mirror and tell yourself how awesome you are, you know the truth. You can't cognitive-behavioral-therapy your way out of what you know. So I gave up trying to fix myself and decided to become a librarian.

And then Jung re-entered my life and... I changed. For the very first time, something worked! It didn't work the way I had planned or wished (it never does) but I could feel it, I could see it. Other people could see it! Because the thing that was missing was the depth. The only way you can fix a problem is to go where the problem actually exists, and psychological problems, the serious ones that affect the entirety of one's life, are rooted in the depths one's psyche, or mind. Therefore, the only way to fix them is to go into the depths of the psyche, that is, the unconscious.


Into the ultraviolet

Reptiles (MC Escher)

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― Jung

The problems we have in our lives are just symptoms of issues in the unconscious, the deep layer underlying our conscious self, our “I.” If I fall in love with a terrible person and my friends tell me he's terrible, and give reasons why and then I'm like “Oh, he's a douche! I'm going to break up with him!” that's a problem on the level of consciousness and can be solved on that level. If, however, I refuse to listen and insist that he really does love me even though he's physically and emotionally abusive, then that's probably a problem that originates in the unconscious. The only real way to solve a problem is to go where it is. The unconscious is where our most tenacious personal problems exist, the only way to truly solve them is to work with it.

The inner, subjective world and the outer, objective one are mirrors of each other. Just as there are lands and peoples, an entire universe, in our outer reality so too are there lands, peoples, planets, and worlds within. It's a strange, magical reality, a true mirror to the rational, logical reality of the daylight world of consciousness but it's no less real, and no less powerful. We have people and things in our outer, objective reality that we need to deal with. In that situation, we need to work on the outer level. However, we also have people and things - that is, complexes and archetypes - in our inner, subjective reality that we also need to deal with. We use our conscious mind to deal with outer reality. We need to go into our personal unconscious to deal with inner reality.

“Everything you do here, all of the houses, everything, was fantasy to begin with, and fantasy has a proper reality. That is not to be forgotten; fantasy is not nothing. It is, of course, not a tangible object, but it is a fact, nevertheless. It is a manifestation of something, and that is a reality.”
― Jung

Jung compared these two worlds - outer, objective reality and inner, subjective reality - to the two poles of the light spectrum, the infrared and ultraviolet ends of the spectrum. At the infrared end is the body; instincts, physiological symptoms, physical perceptions; the “real world” expressions of the archetype. At the opposite end is spirit; ideas, dreams, fantasies, religious imagery, complexes; the psychological, ultraviolet end of the human psyche.

For example, the Mother archetype can come to us physically, through an outer person, or the urge to nurture, or maybe a constant hunger. If a person has Mother hunger and she keeps trying to stuff it down with food, or find some person to provide the mothering she missed, this is an attempt to work with the archetype on the infrared side, the side of instinct and physical reality. The ultraviolet side of the archetype would be dream figures, an inner image of the Mother, or the feeling of love, or a lack of it; the complex. A complex is an aggregation of feelings, thoughts, images, and expectations around the nucleus of an archetype; it's our personal, individual psychic expression of it. This is the end we need to work at.

We have to work on psychological problems on the symbolic level, that’s the level you need to be at in order to make deep, lasting changes. If we work on things on the conscious level, the infrared level, we just keep repeating them over and over, never changing or growing out of them. This is because we need to become conscious; those contents of the unconscious that are pushing upwards need to be brought into the light. Unless we deal with the problem on the symbolic level we don’t increase consciousness. Compulsions, obsessions, even physical problems like illnesses or even accidents, are our unconscious attempts to try to solve these inner problems but unless we increase consciousness we will never change. However, if we do manage to do so we can, and will, change. Not by getting rid of the problem but by growing out of it; in comparison to our new, larger personality what was once a huge, looming dragon becomes a tiny little gecko. The Self wants to help us, wants to increase consciousness in us, and through us the world. That’s exactly why we get problems. Our problems are the Self's gift to us to help us grow, to become more and more whole. These problems are the catalyst that allow us to bring more of who we really actually are into the world.

The realization and assimilation of instinct never takes place at the red end, i.e., by absorption into the instinctual sphere, but only through integration of the image which signifies and at the same time evokes the instinct, although in a form quite different from the one we meet on the biological level.

Psychologically the archetype as an image of instinct is a spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives; it is the sea to which all rivers wend their way, the prize which the hero wrests from the fight with the dragon.

- Jung, “On the Nature of the Psyche”

This process isn’t about becoming spiritual. It isn’t even about becoming a better person, though that’s not an uncommon result. Spirituality isn’t a prize that once you get it everything is perfect and you are perfect and you live in a permanent state of nirvana. Spirituality is about learning to recognize the sacred that already always surrounds us. Spirituality is just learning to see the soul of the world, a soul that also lives in us. We are imperfect, as the world is imperfect. Learning to swim with the currents of life, to let them flow into you and back out into the world, to do so cleanly and with awareness, regardless of our circumstances, that is spirituality.

The thing to remember is; everything is spiritual practice. You don’t have to make it spiritual, it already is. And the harder the thing is, the more it challenges you, the better. It is literally like working out; the harder it is, the more consistently you do it, the stronger you get. You have resistance to going to the gym - who doesn’t? - that’s spiritual practice. You find yourself in a situation where you can get a huge benefit if you cheat? Spiritual practice. You need to develop one of your scary cognitive functions, huge spiritual practice.

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
― The Gospel of Thomas

This process isn't about becoming a perfect human being with no flaws or failures. It's about how owning every part of ourselves leads us to wholeness, to integration of all of our orphan parts. Even now sometimes I feel like the lowest, worst person. I have so many flaws; I’m lazy, unreliable. Struggle to relate emotionally to others. Sometimes I feel like the biggest failure on the planet, that I've disappointed myself and everyone around me. And yet.... I’ve also been graced with moments of such joy, and such connection - a sacred joy, and joyful connection - brief as they may have been. We don't become “better” people, we learn how to better become who we truly are. Jung said that “the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” It is only by becoming who we truly are that we open ourselves up to connection with the sacred source of life.

We hold tightly onto nothing; not power, not honor, not adulation, not wealth, not even love. We hold these things gently, like a small, delicate bird. Maybe the bird lands in our open hands. Maybe it doesn’t. The point isn’t having the bird, it’s being present, regardless of what birds may fly to us. It’s experiencing our lives fully. And that includes the ugliness… especially our own ugliness. By experiencing all that life is, by accepting all that we are and that others are, we clear away everything that was blinding us to this world soul. The dark side of God wants to be known as much as the Light but it’s a very difficult and dangerous task. If we don’t do it right destruction could result. But, if we don’t even try then that possible result will become a certainty, both for ourselves and the world. The light needs the dark. They are two sides of the same golden coin.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This ‘outgrowing’, as I formerly called it, on further experience was seen to consist in a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through this widening of view, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency.

-  Jung


Everyday spirituality

Gallery (MC Escher)

“If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough — sustain it, be true to it — we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz

Spirituality isn’t weird, or special, or superpowered. It is average, ordinary, everyday… but the thing is, the “average, ordinary, everyday” is special, and sacred. Spirituality is about seeing the sacred in life. It’s as if most of us can only see a small, black and white image of reality. Those who have had their eyes opened see everything in technicolor… More, they see, feel, smell, and taste reality. They’re finally able to experience reality as it is. Mosts of us are living in Plato’s cave, sitting there trapped, able only to watch the world on a small, crappy old black and white television. But when we're finally able to free ourselves, though, we can go out into the real world and experience it’s ordinary, everyday magic.

This isn’t to say that paranormal events can’t happen; synchronicities remind us that the world is alive. But it’s not something that we should rely on. It’s a gift, not something we should, or even could, trap, enslave, and put to work for us. To use the unconscious in such a way is as shameful and loathsome as it is to use another person. Nature is not here for our use but to manifest the beautiful and terrible glory of God… as is the unconscious, as are we ourselves. To use it for such an ignoble and grotesque purpose as to puff up our insignificant egos is disgusting, and the very definition of sin. And it’s why we’re all in the situation we're in today, with humanity on the brink of self-annihilation.

“Faith, hope, love, and insight are the highest achievements of human effort. They are found - given - by experience. But what will he do when he sees only too clearly why his patient is ill; when he sees that it arises from his having no love, but only sexuality; no faith, because he is afraid to grope in the dark; no hope, because he is disillusioned by the world and by life; and no understanding, because he has failed to read the meaning of his own existence?”
―  Jung

The drive of egotism is, at it's root, a holy desire. Every time we want to be the best, most loved, richest, most popular, or successful, or whatever, what we're really searching for is the Self. This is the golden prize, the heavenly kingdom, that is the goal of every myth and fairy tale. But, because we refuse to accept our legitimate suffering, to do the hard work necessary to redeem our own portion of the sacred, that holy desire turns into something foul and capable only of bringing unnecessary suffering and destruction. Sensation’s divine gift is faith, trust, assurance. For intuition it's hope, aspiration, direction. Feeling's gift is love, connection, cherishing. And thinking, at it's highest level, gives us insight, wisdom, and vision. Peace, hope, love, and wisdom; these are our birthrights. But we will only bring these into the world if we are willing to do our work, and suffer our legitimate suffering, the suffering which belongs to us and is ours.

“A complex can be really overcome only if it is lived out to the full. In other words, if we are to develop further, we have to draw to us and drink down to the very dregs what, because of our complexes, we have held at a distance.”
― Jung

Spirituality isn’t easy. God isn’t a big daddy in the sky who makes everything nice for you if you’re a good little girl. It’s hard. Jesus called on us to follow him, to do as he did. He chose to let himself be crucified. We, too, face the same moral choice; we, too, must allow ourselves to be crucified, must suffer being hung up, pulled in opposite directions, to hang there and hang there and hang there. Suffering is a natural, normal part of life, not something to be avoided. Unnecessary suffering should be avoided but necessary suffering - suffering which is yours, which belongs to you - requires that it be lived out, drunk down to the dregs, in order for you to fulfill the task you were born for.

Trials are a way of making us worthy; making us strong enough, skilled enough, clever enough to succeed at our goal. Each trial teaches us something, makes us stronger, strong enough to overcome the next trial, which prepares us for the one after. The struggle is hard, it’s painful. Whatever the thing in your life is that you least want to do, that is probably the one thing you should do. When difficult, traumatic experiences come to us, accept them for what they are: opportunities to bring you closer to the purpose that you alone can serve.

What about suffering in late life? As Eddinger points out suffering in any age can be understood by the ego as the attempts of the Self to incarnate. The way it feels to the ego when we’re suffering is unpleasant but it’s often simply God trying to incarnate. It means this process trying to occur from below so to speak, because the ego doesn’t know the intention of the Self. If the ego knew the intention of the Self it wouldn’t hurt so much. Jung writes about this; he says as we extend our consciousness into the unconscious we contact spheres of a not yet transformed God, so as the ego in later life brings this material up and thinks about it and articulates it, that helps to transform the Self or helps to transform the as yet unconscious God, or aspects of the Self.

 - Lionel Corbett

It is hard to accept: the fire has to burn the fire, one just has to burn in the emotion till the fire dies down and becomes balanced. That is something which unfortunately cannot be evaded. The burning of the fire, of the emotion, cannot be tricked out of one’s system; there is no recipe for getting rid of it, it has to be endured. The fire has to burn until the last unclean element has been consumed, which is what all alchemical texts say in different variations and we have not found any other way either. It cannot be hindered but only suffered till what is mortal or corruptible, or, as our text says so beautifully, till the corruptible humidity, the unconsciousness, has been burnt up. That is the meaning, it is the acceptance of suffering.”

- Marie-Louise von Franz


Everything is part of spiritual practice. The MBTI gives us an idea of what it is precisely that we as individuals need to do, what’s the crap that we’re personally avoiding. Maybe our spiritual practice is enduring the awkwardness and humiliation social interactions, as is my case. Yours will be unique to you and your type. Whatever it is, we need to do it and do it and do it, and cook ourselves in all those negative emotions. As we do so we cook out the bad water, the unconsciousness of the Unconscious, leaving behind only pure, clean, nourishing water.

The best definition of wisdom actually, which at first I thought was the most naive definition, is the definition of Meister Eckhart, but it’s the hardest of all to achieve. His definition is that wisdom consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding delight in doing it. I find that’s probably the most profound definition but the hardest, because usually what you have to do next is some crap that you don’t want to have to do. So that’s very hard to get to. But if you do get to it, then it has a certain meaning that we’ll perhaps come to.

- Lionel Corbett

Rebirth

Hand with Reflecting Sphere (MC Escher)

One of the major difficulties that we have is the ego thinks that ego knows how the individual ought to be. But we are not who we think we are. It’s very important for us to let go of our ego ideas of who we think we are and not have too fixed a smaller self-concept because we need to discover more how the Self thinks the ego ought to be. So the function of old age is the culmination of this lifelong process of clarification, what Freud and Scott Maxwell calls “discovering your essence,” and making conscious all your disparate parts of yourself with the aid of ego consciousness, or, as Jung says, helping the creator to become conscious of his creation. Or developing the ego into a model of the Self, which it really is, or as he quotes Silesius: “I am God’s child and son and He is mine.” That’s what that means psychologically. The Self that’s present at birth can become more conscious of itself throughout life. Then psychological development and spiritual development are absolutely synonymous, only the words are different, but the process is the same.

- Lionel Corbett, “Jungian Views on Aging”

Question: Why do we humans live for so long? This has always been the case; among hunter-gatherers, barring accidents or illnesses, people generally lived to around age 85. We can assume that our hunter-gathering ancestors were the same. But why would this be so? Nothing exists in nature that doesn’t serve a purpose. Like tails on humans or feet on whales, if a thing doesn’t serve the animal it evolves out of existence. So why do women live nearly half of their lives unable to give birth anymore? Why do men live so many years after their ability to out-compete all those strong, young men wanes? If the tasks of youth and adulthood are work and family, what does it mean that we live so many years, decades even, after continuing these tasks is feasible? What are the tasks of this final stage of life?

Our first task of the second half of life is to develop the parts of ourselves that we were never really able to, being so busy living our lives. In the first half of life we develop our stronger, easier functions. This happens naturally; that which you are good at gives you pleasure, and brings rewards, so you keep using it. This continuous use develops these functions to higher and higher levels of proficiency. Those functions that are weak, difficult, and awkward to use are avoided, becoming more and more anemic and atrophied. But these unused parts of ourselves eventually press for recognition; that which has been kept in the darkness longs for the light.

Like a person who only exercises the right side of their body, something starts pushing us to work on the left. Those functions we’ve worked on for so many years start to bore us, like reading the same book, or playing the same video game for decades. We start itching to stretch ourselves beyond that which has become stale and overly familiar. Previously avoided parts of us become wondrous, exciting new lands for us to explore.

“The fruits of biological life are children, but the fruit of psychological life, especially in late life, is meaning.What old people have to do is make meaning and make culture, make new ideas, not compete with the young. They have a different responsibility, and their fecundity is a spiritual fecundity and the production of new meaning.”

― Lionel Corbett

Our second task is finding meaning. Because we have complexes we repeat certain things over and over again. By looking back over our lives, with all it’s ups and downs and round and rounds, certain themes begin to emerge. We start seeing the connections between what happened to us, and the great myths being played out through us. This process needs to be approached with seriousness and courage because it can be very dangerous to the individual’s psychological well being. At first our memories are disjointed, our lives seem meaningless and absurd. We feel shame and grief at the discrepancy between the promise of youth and what we actually managed to accomplish. We can’t find the connections between events.

When unsuccessful it can lead to mordancy, regret, stagnation, even despair. But when successful it leads to acceptance, and allows for further development. By looking back over our lives we learn what our nature really is. And here’s the thing; if we don’t undertake this difficult and harrowing task it will still lead to bitterness, emptiness, and despair. You can’t actually avoid it, not without paying an even greater price. These are the bitter, ill-tempered aged; moody and dejected, fixated on all that they've lost. Jung wrote that life’s natural upward movement in the first half of life keeps us optimistic and generally moving forward. But, in the second half, unless we have contact with the sacred the slow ebbing away of vitality leaves us stranded in a sour, barren old age.

“Tears, sorrow, and disappointment are bitter, but wisdom is the comforter in all psychic suffering. Indeed, bitterness and wisdom form a pair of alternatives: where there is bitterness wisdom is lacking, and where wisdom is there can be no bitterness.”
— Jung

Contact with the Self is essential, especially in later life. Without it we become bitter and full of self-pity. When we have a relationship with the Self we transcend the personal while, at the same time, becoming genuinely individual. It gives us a different view of death; death now has a positive value as it’s understood to be a rebirth, not an end. We begin living in sacred, eternal time - kairos - while at the same time we live even more fully in everyday, chronological time. The mundane and the divine are united within us.

At the end of every stage of life we are required to give something up, so that we might attain something new. Just as an infant needs give up the bottle and diaper to become a toddler, we need to let go of that which cannot be, which is no longer good for us. In this way we are able focus on that which we can and should be. Our elder years, from approximately 65 to 85, are as long as childhood. This time wouldn’t exist if it didn’t serve an important purpose; the development of spiritual meaning, a spiritual life. The spiritual gifts of peace, hope, love, and wisdom, which are only attained after our long battle with the formidable dragon of our fears.

The purpose of our maturation is to enable the Godhead to rejuvenate, if we could only understand that. When we are born God is old; when we grow old, God becomes young; and when we die, God experiences rebirth. And this goes on and on, but not in the sense that the Godhead is feeding on us, but the whole thing is rather a natural process which is not yet too well understood. It is absolutely essential that, particularly in old age, we do not lose or have lost our connectedness with the Godhead for otherwise we not only deprive God of our share in His rejuvenation, but may actually disturb the cosmic ecology which, in turn, affects us. Ideally, so the voice says, we gain wisdom as we grow older, but only few people do. To accumulate knowledge per se is not all that important; what is important is that we are connected with the Godhead or the Divine, and let it live within us, even though it is also outside of us. Belief in a cosmic Supreme Being or Power constellates the inner child and thus furthers the divine rejuvenation process. If we ignore the divine element, it sinks into itself and ceases to be conscious of itself. As we grow older we often lose the child, and as we lose the child we are apt to simultaneously sever our ties to the divine. There was also some indication that the birth and the death process are actually the same except that as little children we seem to be contained in the Divine element, whilst in old age we are apparently expected to be a container for the Divine element.

- Lionel Corbett, “Jungian Views on Aging”

There is an archetype of the divine child in us, as there is an inner archetype of the wise elder. The Child is unconscious totality, the totality before consciousness; Jung’s 200 million year old man. The Elder recapitulates this totality but at a higher level, as the Elder has regained this totality after bringing the various parts of the psyche into consciousness. This consciousness is the fruit of a lifetime of differentiations and reunifications, constantly enlarging the personality by bring more of the as yet unreconstructed parts of the Self into the light of consciousness.

Before the existence of ego there is no consciousness; despite it’s many shortcoming there can be no consciousness without ego. By going through this process, it’s the ego that allows the Self to constantly get born. Our purpose is to give birth to God, as God gave birth to us. If we do everything right, when we die God is reborn. The Self gives birth to ego in childhood, then ego, in it's turn, gives birth to the Self in elderhood.

“For the alchemist the one primarily in need of redemption is not man, but the deity who is lost and sleeping in matter. Only as a secondary consideration does he hope that some benefit may accrue to himself from the transformed substance as the panacea, the medicina catholica, just as it may to the imperfect bodies, the base or 'sick' metals, etc. His attention is not directed to his own salvation through God's grace, but to the liberation of God from the darkness of matter.”
― Jung

Increasing consciousness redeems the God that lives within us. We must bring Them into the world, no matter how difficult and painful it might be, thereby also redeeming the God that lives in the world. Individuation is the goal; it is incarnation on the one hand, and differentiation on the other. It's rebirth, both of oneself and of God. New images continually rise up from the unconscious as revelation. Through these images new consciousness is possible, and this new consciousness is what makes this whole process take place. What does that mean for you? What is the flower waiting deep in your soul to bloom into the light? What is the unreconstructed part of God that you are being asked to give birth to? This is reunification of divine unity, the re-establishment of Totality. The rebirth, not only of ourselves but also of God.

The losses of old age, which seem very painful, actually enhance our own differentiation. As Jane Will writes, we have to take back our projections from the world. We project onto the world the way we think it is. When all those things die off those projections have to be taken back, and we see things the way they really are. We have to find what was lost on the outside, symbolically, on the inside. That’s the idea of finding the whole world in the microcosm, or, as the Gospel of St. Thomas also says; whoever finds himself is superior to the world.

- Lionel Corbett, “Jungian Views on Aging”



Links

Jungian Views on Aging
The Self
The flower of humanity


Sources

Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy

Marie-Louise von Franz, “The Hidden Source of Self-Knowledge,” Dreams

CG Jung (from John Beebe's Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type)

A huge debt is owed to analyst Lionel Corbett. His talk “Jungian Views on Aging” (from the Jungianthology Podcast) forms the basis of the final section. I doubt this would have been written, or at least it would have taken me a long time to figure out, without it. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and hopefully provide a platform from which future generations can surpass us.

MBTI: The Core Complexes

Homer & Marge Simspson, and Ned & Maude Flanders

[Image from Giphy]

Everyone knows nowadays that people “have complexes.” What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.
— Jung


When you find out your (or someone else’s) type you only know part of the story… 1/4 of the story to be precise. What we commonly think of as our type is only that of one of the four inner personalities that exist within us. This is one reason why different individuals of the same type can be so different. 

For example, you can have an ESFJ who’s done some work and developed their opposite personality, INTP. Such an ESFJ is going to look very different from ESFJs who haven't developed their inner INTP, spending a lot of time reading and thinking and working very hard on their intellectual pursuits. They’re never going to be as good at being an INTP as an actual INTP - using ones' inferior function is always awkward and scary - but it will bring them far more meaning than it would for an actual INTP. The same holds for every type. The paradoxical truth is that our greatest weakness is actually our greatest strength. 

This is also why we sometimes find certain people irresistible, we project this internal “other” onto an appropriate target. For example healthy ESFJs, when they get to a certain level of development, will often find themselves mysteriously attracted to healthy INTPs. Think of the phrase “opposites attract,” this is why that can be the case.

The four inner personalities are basically two pairs of opposites, two couples, that can be thought of as the four pillars of a complete personality. The first two personalities, the lucid ego and animus, are easy to see as they are conscious. The second two personalities, however, are generally much harder to become aware of as they are repressed by the conscious personalities. If you flip a coin even though you may get heads, tails still exists, it’s just hidden from sight on the other side of the coin. The shadow animus and ego still exist, they're just hidden from sight on the other side of the coin so to speak.

(“S. Anima/us” and “S. Ego” are Shadow Anima/us and Shadow Ego respectively.) 

Saying that someone is an MBTI type is limiting... and incorrect. No one is just an ENTP, or an ESFP, or any other type. No two individuals of the same type are the same. First off, we're all shaped by a lifetime of experiences. We're shaped by the things that happened to us but, even more, by the choices we make, by how we choose to respond to those experiences. Do we take our experiences as opportunities to grow and deepen? Or do we hide from having to make those often difficult choices? Even deeper than all of that we have a profound individuality, along with our profound connection with each other and with the Universe. And finally, we're not just one type, we have all four types of our sodality within us. All four of the types that are in us are also us; who we are and how we relate to the world are the result of all of these four inner personalities, not just the one that's the most obvious. 

 

The core complexes  

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.

— Carl Jung

The four inner personalities can be summed up with the following descriptions:

• The lucid (conscious) ego is what you, and others, think you are.
• The lucid animus or anima is what you fear but at the same time wish you were.
• The shadow (unconscious) animus or anima is the opposite of the lucid anima/us, it’s what you are good at but reject... or should reject.
  
• The shadow ego is what you really are deep down but aren’t aware of.

Any one of these inner personalities can be active at any time, and this can change moment to moment. When a situation arises in which you need to access certain functions you'll spontaneously go into the complex that contains those functions. When that particular personality is unconscious, though, we usually end up expressing the more negative traits of that type. For example, ENTPs who find themselves in a situation where they need to be serious and hard-working often find themselves in their antagonistic shadow animus; in their case, they basically become really anxious INTJs. This changes when we develop the shadow complexes but until then, as is the case with all unconscious psychological contents, they only express their negative aspects.

 

What happens more commonly, however, is that we wind up spending most of our time on one or the other of the complexes as our homebase. If our homebase is our lucid ego we are stereotypical of that particular type. If it's the lucid anima/us, we balance our main type with strengths from our opposite type, even though we're not particularly skilled at it. If our homebase is the shadow anima/us, we're the worst expression of that type but in a very normal, average way. And the only time our homebase is the shadow ego is if we're in deep emotional distress, probably pathological. Or, conversely, we've reached the highest levels of spiritual development.

Personality 1: The Lucid Ego

Our sense of self. This is the hub that holds all the other complexes together in the wheel of consciousness. We become conscious of this complex first, which makes sense as it contains the easiest functions to develop. Made up of the hero the Hero/ine and the Parent functions. If all goes well we usually finish developing the ego complex by the end of our youth/young adult years. When someone says there a certain type they mean the ego complex.

This is usually the “homebase” of our conscious awareness though that’s not always the case; in fact, many people spend a lot more time in one of the other complexes. This is one major reason why some people are so hard to type. However, unless we’re being “possessed” by one of the complexes - unless consciousness has been seized by another complex - the ego complex still, even in this situation, seems to retains its control.
 

This complex is the foundation of the cultivated individual. Without it, no growth is possible. In order to bring unconscious contents into consciousness we need a strong ego. It’s the boat we carry the unconscious contents back to shore in. However, everything has a good and bad side and the ego is no different. We can get stuck here if we're only interested in power or advancement as the ego complex is our greatest strength. If we believe that it’s the most important thing, the only important thing, it can do great harm. One obvious way is when we think our needs and desires are more important than those of others. The ego can also think it’s more important than the other parts of the personality and refuse to do the work necessary to develop our other parts. The two are pretty much the same because if we are doing one we're doing the other.

The moral crux of this complex is: do we put it in its proper place, not as the master but as the servant of the Self? Or do we confuse it with the Self instead? All of our unreasonable, narcissistic desires to be the most beautiful, most popular, most successful, most wealthy, most powerful, what have you, are all, at root, our innate desire for the Self. The Self is the golden prize that these other things are symbols of.... and cheap replacements for. The supremacy of the ego is a very powerful illusion because the ego is, actually, a symbol of the Self brought into mundane reality; the Self is the original that the ego is a miniature, earthly copy of. This makes it easy to confuse the two.

The ego's purpose is to make the moral choice to do the work we should be doing. However, the things we have to work on — the things that come into our lives, or rise up out of us, that challenge us — that all comes from the Self, not the ego. The ego has to do the things that are the ego's responsibilities: making the moral choice to suffer crucifixion on the cross of our irreconcilable opposites, to attempt to surmount our insurmountable difficulties. In this way, rather of being an impediment, the ego complex becomes the decisive factor in one’s psychological and spiritual maturation.

The possession of complexes does not in itself signify neuroses… and the fact that they are painful is no proof of pathological disturbance. Suffering is not illness; it is the normal counterpole to happiness. A complex becomes pathological only when we think we have not got it.

- Jung, “Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life”

[Art by Yu Cheng Hong]


Personality 2: The Shadow Complex

The lucid animus; our contrasexual, or opposite gendered, inner other. If we identify as female this inner other is male, if male she’s female. It's the gateway to our personal unconscious. Integrating it gives us access to deeper levels of consciousness. I also call this the antipodal personality as it’s the opposite of the ego; the equal and opposite weakness of our greatest strength. If our greatest strength is intuition, it's our sensation weakness; if we're most comfortable in the outer world, it's introverted, etc. It’s made up of the Anima/us and Child functions. The shadow complex is initially terrifying partly because it is and always will be painful and embarrassing; no matter how much of it we bring into consciousness it will always be our Achilles’ heel. But it’s also because, when we begin this whole process, it contains everything that we are unconscious of.

When we first confront the shadow complex it is, as is typical of undifferentiated contents of the unconscious, mixed up with (“contaminated with”) everything else in the unconscious: the animus and anima, the enemy and the criminal, the inner witch and the inner brute. And since everything is unconscious it’s all wicked and unreformed. Jung describes our initial encounter with the shadow in this way:

The unconscious is commonly regarded as a sort of incapsulated fragment of our most personal and intimate life - something like what the bible calls the “heart” and considers the source of all evil thoughts. In the chambers of the heart dwell the wicked blood spirits, swift anger and sensual weakness. This is how the unconscious looks when seen from the conscious side. But consciousness appears to be essentially an affair of the cerebrum, which sees everything separately and in isolation, and therefore sees the unconscious in this way too, regarding it outright as my unconscious. Hence it is generally believed that anyone who descends into the unconscious gets into a suffocating atmosphere of egocentric subjectivity, and in this blind alley is exposed to the attack of all ferocious beasts which the caverns of the psychic underworld are supposed to harbour.

- Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

This is the first test, the gate that is guarded by Cerberus, the terrifying watchdog of the Underworld. It’s so terrifying that it generally scares off most people before they even start because, let’s face it, none of us want to see what we really look like. Most people shy away from this ugly, painful, and humiliating part of ourselves but until you gaze deeply into your own reflection, you will never pass through this gate. This is our first experience with the unconscious, the narrow door we call the shadow.

However, once we do pass our first test we find a whole world opening up before us, and what at first appeared to be sinister darkness reveals itself to actually be one of the brightest parts of our personality. This is a common experience when dealing with the unconscious; in truth, when we face the dragon and allow ourselves to fully experience our shame we find that this is one of the best parts of ourselves. And, if we continue this work, we will find that this is actually the easiest part of the process. All you have to do is endure your human imperfections. The hard work comes after dealing with the shadow.

The shadow complex isn’t actually that difficult to integrate. In fact, most people of even very average psychological health generally seem to manage it. There are many people who are neither neurotic nor particularly healthy who naturally and fairly easily integrate this complex. Many people of very average health “live” in the shadow complex but they do so in a very average way. These are the people who are generally comfortable and satisfied with their lives and see no need to reflect on it.

When they are unconscious, complexes are often unpleasant and unhealthy. However, the shadow complex, along with the ego complex, is actually in our conscious psyche; it’s the lucid, or bright, anima/us. So long as you don’t try to avoid it most normal people seem to develop this part of their psyche by mid-life. A healthy person, however, will express the healthiest qualities of their lucid anima/us, just as they do for every complex. The trick is getting there; when complex is being fully integrated it’s very painful and difficult, like giving birth to yourself.

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”
― Jung
 

In contrast to a neurotic person, or even someone who is of average psychological health, a healthy person will express the highest qualities of their shadow complex. For example, an ENFP who naturally, without any real effort, develops their ISTJ shadow complex will actually be quite practical and careful. However, an ENFP who has really developed their lucid anima/us — has suffered the torments of having to deal with all the excruciating, challenging, and boring mundanities of their ISTJ Shadow complex — such an ENFP will express the absolute highest and most noble traits of the ISTJ. They are trustworthy and loyal, servants of humanity, working tirelessly to make the world a better place without asking for anything in return. Even people with ISTJ as their ego complex won’t be as amazing, although their ability “to ISTJ” for long periods will, naturally, be more robust than even a very healthy ENFP.

Reforming our lucid anima/us requires that we do the hard work of confronting the darkness and accepting all of the unsightly, disagreeable, and, most of all, painfully excruciating parts of ourselves. We need to allow it to live with us, to embarrass and even torment us. It’s like the story of the princess who had to marry the frog; we must let the ugly frog sit next to us at dinner, to feed off our own plate. We need to marry this unsightly part of us, for when we do it finally reveals itself to be our handsome prince.

When we finally confront, then integrate, this part of ourselves we find that we are able to tap into something what, while weak and awkward, and will always be weak and awkward, is far more meaningful then our brawny ego complex could ever be. While the ego complex is the way we are productive and act effectively in the world, the shadow complex is what imbues our actions with beauty and nobility.

The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is a world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me.

- Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

[Image from Zerochan.net]

Personality 3: The Anima/us Complex

The shadow anima/us; the unconscious side of our anima/us; the dark half of our inner partner. This is, according to John Beebe, basically the obnoxious, unpleasant side of our animus or anima; where the lucid anima/us is the “nice guy/girl” the shadow anima/us is the “bad boy/girl.” It can be thought of as the antagonistic, mirror personality. It will have the opposite attitudes (introversion/extroversion) of the ego complex. For example; the ISFJ is made up of Si heroine and Fe parent. The type with Se hero and Fi parent, the opposite attitudes of ISFJ, would be the ESFP. So the shadow anima/us of ISFJ is ESFP, and vice versa.

After we’ve integrated the conscious lucid anima/us, the shadow complex, we start becoming aware of the unconscious shadow anima/us, the anima/us complex. This is the first of our two unconscious complexes and, as it’s unconscious, it’s far more difficult to integrate successfully then the shadow complex. We have a love/hate relationship with it where we are both attracted to and repulsed by it, as if we were in a volatile, roller coaster romance with a particularly vexing lover. The animus complex and is formed from the Nemesis and Critic functions.

The negative qualities expressed by one's unconscious shadow anima/us are one's very normal, every day negative qualities. This isn’t where we become evil and destroy the world, we’re just off putting. When we get into normal arguments - not severe ones, just your ordinary, every day disagreements - what is often happening is that one or both people are going into their shadow anima/us and, because it’s unconscious, expressing it’s less attractive qualities.

For example, let’s look at the ISFJ when their in their shadow animus; the ESFP. When an ISFJ is frustrated by physical reality they tend to get ragey, even violent. They will yell a lot and sometimes literally punch things that aren’t working right. Or an average-neurotic ESFJ will be selfish and childish, and make unreasonable demands on those they feel they can take advantage of, much like an unhealthy ISFP, their shadow anima/us. Or an INFP, instead of being connected with their powerful emotional core, will be shallow and concerned only with looking good to others when in their ENFJ shadow anima/us. When we go into our anima/us complex without consciousness we express it in a disagreeable way, as in our previous example of a ENTP worrying a lot and becoming anxious when they need to be practical and hard-working. Anxiety and worry are the negative side of their shadow anima/us, as raginess and destructiveness are part of the negative side of the ISFJ’s shadow anima/us.
 

In addition to dipping into our shadow anima/us when under pressure, we can also chronically stay in it in a very normal, relatively well adapted way, at least in the first half of life. Just like with those individuals who live in the lucid anima/us, this can make these individuals very difficult to type because they look more like their shadow animus than their ego, their “type”. In this situation the complex, even though relatively unconscious, isn’t really causing huge problems, at least not at this point in time.

Regardless of whether we go into the shadow anima/us temporarily or we habitually live there, when we're young it isn’t that big a deal. We are slightly unhealthy but still generally functional; just your normal, fallible, ordinary jerk. Maybe we’re a bit noxious but it’s nothing too disruptive. Others around us can usually see our flaws pretty clearly even though we ourselves willfully turn a blind eye to them. At this point we are barely on the cusp of neurosis but we are still functional; our unconsciousness may cause discord but it’s not ruining lives. But, as we age, unless we start growing we will become more and more neurotic as we find ourselves grappling with feelings of meaninglessness and stagnation. And, as long as we are unconscious of this part of us, there’s always a danger that we'll truly fall into serious neurosis. Living in this complex isn’t harmless.

Even people who live in the shadow animus in a generally not terrible way will constantly find themselves falling into the trap of acting out the shadow animus's worst traits. What is required by this complex, first and foremost, is that we stop blindly acting out. When we catch ourselves going into it in a negative, harmful way we need to stop. Take a deep breath. Feel your feelings, whatever they are; frustration, anxiety, impatience, envy, whatever it is that is currently possessing us. We need to stop and feel those feelings, and then we need to decide what to do with them. Are they really called for? Are they helpful? Are they moral? Are they right?

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
― Jung

The first thing we need to do is actually admit that we are doing what we’re doing. The biggest problem with this complex is how invisible it is to us (though not to anyone else). Since we aren’t able to see our own disgraceful behavior we usually end up projecting it on to others. We feel so much shame for our innocent lucid anima/us but we can’t see how horribly our unconscious anima/us is behaving. If the moral crux of the ego complex is to submit to a greater authority, and the lucid anima/us is to face our fears, the moral crux of the shadow is to confess our faults. Take back the all the flaws we project on to everyone else around us and accept them back into us, where they belong. To take another step towards wholeness and integration.

One thing we need to remember about the animus complex is that it contains the critic function; this is the function that we turn cruelly and coldly on to others but ought to be aiming at ourselves. What is the thing we should be doing? Where are we failing? Whenever we find ourselves cruelly judging others with complete coldness and an utter lack of empathy we need to stop. Think. Remember. I do that too. In fact, I do that WORSE. I am the one that I should be judging.

The anima/us complex, like the ego complex, is strong. While we not as inexhaustible as the ego complex - if we use it too much we will eventually get tired - we can still use it far more than the other two complexes. It's very easy for us to fall into the trap of trying to live here, especially because it's the thing that we most want in the world. If the shadow complex is the thing we least want to do but must do, the anima/us complex is the thing we most want but must sacrifice in order to avoid neurosis. It's the sacrifice that our personal and spiritual growth requires from us. But it's not all austerity and sacrifice; if we manage to make the correct though heartbreaking choice here we finally face the final test, we come to the final gate: the wise old woman/man.

[Image from PicsArt]


Personality 4: The Wise Old Woman/Man Complex

The final mystery; our secret, shadow ego. I call this complex the wise old woman/man because it’s both demonic and wise. Like Baba Yaga it can devour us, cook us in it’s fire and eat us up. But it’s also the keeper of wisdom, and guide to Arcadia. We must be as subtle and wise as it is when dealing with it. While it initially only shows it’s demonic, destructive side, once we’ve done the excruciating and protracted work of bringing it into consciousness it reveals itself to be our angelic guide to the Self. P4 is made up of the daimon and trickster functions.

As the Daimon function is the nucleus of this complex they share many of the same traits: obscurity, extreme resistance to being brought into consciousness, the tendency to only express itself in the worst most destructive ways. It is intractable, irresistible, uncontrollable, unreasonable, and demented. Where P3 is horrible and obnoxious but in a very human and relatable way, the wise old woman/man complex is utterly demonic. When we are seized by this complex we lose all control of ourselves. When people commit crimes of passion, or when a mob commits monstrous atrocities, it’s this complex that’s to blame in almost every case.

P4 is rage and hate, it’s madness and destruction. It gets activated when we are hit in our P2 insecurities, which is part of the reason why it’s so important to bring that complex into a healthy relationship with the lucid ego. Marie-Louise von France wrote that it’s our own small, personal evil that gives Big Evil - the vast, inhuman darkness that’s the other half of God's goodness - entry into our hearts. This is why the work we’re doing here is so essential; by reclaiming our own, personal evil we prevent these hideous, Lovecraftian forces from possessing us.

“The madman and the mob are both moved by impersonal, overwhelming forces.”
— Jung

Jung said that these things we are working with in the unconscious are real; they may not be physical, they may be ideas but they’re not “just” ideas. Ideas have consequences. These things have consequences. Barring the presence of sociopaths all atrocities are the result of these invisible forces in our psyches. And even with sociopaths, much of the harm they cause is enabled by those around them who have been blinded and hamstrung by their own weakness and evil. We allow Evil to flourish when we refuse to do the painful work of redeeming our own little evil.

But, if we can’t even see this part of ourselves how can we possibly work on it? This is a large part of the problem and, though I will go into more detail in my later post on working with the MBTI, I can give you the basic keys here. We become able to work on this complex by working on all the other complexes, especially the other gate complex, Personality 2; the lucid animus. Undergoing the torment of the lucid animus with consciousness changes what was fuel for the eruptions of P4 into a way to liberate the shadow ego from the darkness. Never totally or completely - this part of us will always be out of our control - but it will begin to show its angelic face.

It’s only by suffering the most excruciating pain of the most vulnerable part of us that we're able to redeem the demon and return her to her original state as angel. When we do so we free her to perform her holy task; where the lucid animus is our highest and most to noblest aspirations, the shadow ego is where we connect with God.

Personality 4 is the second gate we must pass through, after the first gate of Personality 2. P2 is the gateway to our personal unconscious; the way we access our shadow animus and shadow ego. P4, on the other hand, is our entry to even deeper levels of the unconscious, what Jung called the collective unconscious, where the Self resides. The shadow ego is our hidden personality, our eidolon (eye-DOH-len). The word comes from the Greek and means: double, phantom, ghost; image of an ideal; a shade or phantom look alike.[1] This is our invisible, other self.

There are many stories, across all cultures, of our lost twin; the doppelgänger that, when we encounter them, signals our fate. Fiction is also full of them. I refer to this other self in the very title of this blog, which comes from the following excerpt from Upsnishads:

Two birds, inseparable friends, cling to the same tree. One of them eats the sweet fruit, the other looks on without eating.

On the same tree a man sits grieving, immersed, bewildered by his own impotence. But when he sees the other is contented and knows his glory, then his grief passes away.

When the seer sees the brilliant maker and lord of the world as the Person who has his source in Brahman, then he is wise, and shaking off good and evil, he reaches the highest oneness, free from passions;

For he is the Breath shining forth in all beings, and he who understands this becomes truly wise, not a talker only. He revels in the Self, he delights in the Self, and having performed his works he rests, firmly established in Brahman, the best of those who know Brahman.

— The Upanishads

The bird who eats the fruit is the conscious ego, the ego complex. But we also have another I, another ego; the shadow ego. Our secret other self lives outside of life. We, our ego, eat the sweet fruit of life, but this other I - this hidden ego, our beloved friend and companion - watches without partaking. This other I doesn’t live in the world, she lives in the Unconscious, and as our lucid ego's job is to interact with outer objective reality, this other I’s job is to interact with inner subjective reality.

This is why this complex is the wise old woman; it isn’t because she’s old but because she is the ageless guide to the other world. In fact, she’s only really old when we're young. When we are young this transcendent personality is old, but when we grow old she grows young. She is the avatar of wisdom, the coniunctio, the marriage of our irreconcilable opposites: head and heart, body and soul. As our task with the shadow animus is to unhook him from the ego and connect him up with the lucid animus, his other half, so to here we must unhook the shadow ego from the lucid animus, break their dysfunctional marriage, and connect her back up with her other side, the lucid ego.

Redeeming the eidolon requires a lot of hard work and suffering. But, once we’ve started liberating her from the darkness we begin to want to express the creativity, love, wisdom, peace, and passion of the divine, to bring it into the world. We love to do this thing, whatever it is, but we never get good at it as it’s our greatest weakness. But that’s OK, because it’s purpose is not to gain wealth or acclaim but for a sacred purpose. When Jung, an INTP, created Bollingen he was creating a physical manifestation of his sacred work through his creative ISFP Shadow ego. A normal ISFP will do something similar but it will be mundane; it may be beautiful and expressive but it won’t be sacred. For us to express the sacred we need our inner wise woman/man.

Work on the shadow is one's “apprentice-piece,” the piece we create to graduate to becoming a master. Work on one’s animus or anima is one's “master-piece,” the work that shows the world that we are a master. But the work we do with our shadow ego, the inner wise woman or man, is our Magnum Opus; it’s the greatest, most beautiful, but most challenging work of our lives.

[Art by Rupid Leejm]


Working with the complexes

[Image from Jung's book Psychology and Alchemy]

A complex can be really overcome only if it is lived out to the full. In other words, if we are to develop further we have to draw to us and drink down to the very dregs what, because of our complexes, we have held at a distance.

- Jung, “Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype”


This is going to be a brief introduction to working with the complexes, more to give an idea of what it looks like then anything else. I will be going into more depth in future posts.

Each of the four inner personalities has a relationship with every other personality. Pay attention to your dreams, of course, to see when one of these figures shows up. Also pay attention to any fascinations you may have; libido - desire - is a strong indicator that the unconscious wants to go in a certain direction. Fascination is a form of desire, and attention a form of love; that which you love and value you spend a lot of time thinking about and working on. Someone who loves his garden will constantly be working on it, thinking about it, wondering if it’s OK, fantasizing what new flowers or vegetables he can plant. This work we are doing requires a lot of love, and libido gives us the stamina and motivation to stay the course.

The complexes can come to us from inside or outside. When we fall in love - really fall in love; madly, passionately, unreasonably fall in love - that’s the unconscious working. The unconscious has a special ability to reveal to us the numinous in the world. Without it, life is meaningless and dull. But when we have our relationship to it right, when it’s able to flow in our lives, life has color and savor. This is why, when we fall in love, the world is so much brighter. Or maybe you’re fascinated by a certain book, movie, or TV show. All those preteens and middle-aged women weren’t watching Twilight because it was such a well-made film, they were fascinated by the potent animus figures. When we develop a fascination for a thing or person, pay attention. Eventually you will see your projected complex hiding in them.

They can also come to us from inside. Learn what your various personalities feel like and keep an eye out for them. This is especially the case when you feel suddenly possessed by an affect or emotion; why did I suddenly get so ragey, or so sad? Any overreaction is a sign that complex has been touched. If somebody cuts you off and you get violently angry, that's probably a complex. Try as much as possible to stay present and aware when it happens. If you can’t don’t get discouraged; I still struggle with this and I’ve been working on this for decades. It’s actually supposed to be difficult. Like with physical exercise, if it’s not hard, it’s not working.

“Our suffering comes from our own unlived life – the unseen, unfelt parts of our psyche.”
— Jung

Use active imagination to get to know these inner figures when they make their appearance, whether from within or without. Just be sure that if you work with an outer figure (an actual person in your life) that you don’t try to influence that person; i.e. no black magic. If you try to influence the object of your passions - whether to make a beloved fall in love with you, or to hurt someone who’s hurt you - you will undermine everything that you’re trying to accomplish. Trying to force others, or the Unconscious, to your ego's will is only going make you even more unhealthy and neurotic by increasing, rather than decreasing, unconsciousness. The journey to wholeness requires us to make moral decisions, not to seek to fulfill our wishes but to strike out on an adventure, to answer a great calling.

Make sure you make it very clear to yourself that you are working with your own inner figure, not the other person. If you want to try using active imagination go here for more detailed information on how to do it, or, if you find yourself struggling, go to a Jungian analyst or another type of therapist or healer, preferably someone who is versed in this kind of thing, possibly someone with a spiritual background. Active imagination is basically the same spiritual practice of meditation that every religious tradition has used, for as long as we’ve been humans I imagine. It isn’t for everyone, though, so if it doesn’t work for you, or you just don’t want to do it, don’t worry about it, just focus on the practice of maintaining presence.

Probably the very best way to work with these inner figures, other than active imagination, is to pay extra attention to your romantic feelings. There’s a reason the core complexes so frequently appear in fiction as two romantically connected couples; like in our external relationships, desire and love is the thread that draws the opposites to each other. In every relationship different complexes will interact with each other. For example, despite the fact that my fiancé (“G”) is an ISFJ, and pretty much my opposite in every way, we get along swimmingly. This is because both of us have developed core complexes other than our ego complex; I am in touch with my affectionate, loving ESFJ side, and he’s in touch with his smart, playful, funny inner ENTP. But I believe the heart of our connection is due to our P4 secret egos and their relationship with each other (see below), at least that’s the case from my end.

I know that my inner ISFP calls the shots, even though I can almost never see her as she’s my hidden, other self. It’s her affection for G’s warmth and kindness that feeds my love for, and feelings of connection with, him.  One way I know this is that when we fight in such a way that her feelings are hurt, that connection is completely ruptured. For days. It’s really devastating to G and I hate to hurt him but I literally cannot help it, her feelings are either there or they’re not. She’s the one who loves his genial ISFJ personality, so when she’s sulking there’s not much my INTP ego can do about it.

The reverse is also true; when his vulnerable Ne anima function feels threatened his inner INTJ rises up in really cold, nasty, unrelated way. He becomes suspicious and unkind. When I ask him what I can do to make things better he says “I don’t know!” and, of course, he doesn't. When we are in this state and try to think of a way to make things better there’s almost a feeling of despair as we can’t see any way out.

When these kinds of situations arise we need to bring presence to them. We need to sit with our feelings. Maybe we need to bring our judging Critic function to this part of ourselves. Or maybe we need to soothe and nurture it, as we would a small child. When this happens it means that something in us is trying to get our attention. If we can just endure, if we can bring ourselves to just sit and stew in these unpleasant emotions, maintain our awareness, the solution usually presents itself. Jung said, “when you were up against a wall, put down roots like a tree, until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over the wall and grow.” This is what we must do; we have to center and ground ourselves, let our roots grow deep into the unconscious. The answer will come to us, we just need to give it time.

Any of our complexes can relate with any of another person's complexes. Paying attention to who’s doing what, why, and how - staying present and aware in the face of the natural chaos of our every day lives - is one of the most powerful ways to become conscious of, and eventually integrate, these inner figures.



Integrating the core complexes requires that we give them our time and attention, and that we be willing to suffer. Since we humans are fundamentally lazy this integration is pretty uncommon (Jung once said “laziness is the greatest passion of mankind, even greater than power or sex or anything.”)

This is the great moral question of all of our lives; do we suffer, and toil, as is asked of us? Or do we take the easy way out - the cheaters way out - and wind up a neurotic mess who makes the world a worse place? These things have consequences. Each of us have the capacity to become a powerful channel of healing, bringing clean, healthy waters from the unconscious to wash away all the garbage in our increasingly screwed up world. The world needs the curative powers of the healthy unconscious but that will only happen if more and more of us have the moral courage to turn away from what others (and even we ourselves) tell us is important. To turn inward, to find the treasure without compare, the golden prize: the Self.

Out of evil, much good has come to me. By keeping quiet, repressing nothing, remaining attentive, and by accepting reality - taking things as they are, and not as I wanted them to be - by doing all this, unusual knowledge has come to me, and unusual powers as well, such as I could never have imagined before.

I always thought that when we accepted things they overpowered us in some way or other. This turns out not to be true at all, and it is only by accepting them that one can assume an attitude towards them.

So now I intend to play the game of life, being receptive to whatever comes to me, good and bad, sun and shadow forever alternating, and, in this way, also accepting my own nature with its positive and negative sides. Thus everything becomes more alive to me.

What a fool I was! How I tried to force everything to go according to way I thought it ought to.

— Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies

MBTI

The cognitive functions
The function roles
The Houses
The core complexes
The Sodalities
How to type
Function + roles
My MBTI story

See also

Active imagination
Anima
Animus
Collective unconscious
Coniunctio
Contamination
Differentiation
Ego
Libido
Persona
Projection
Self
Shadow
Wise Old Woman/Man

Links

CS Joseph, “What are the four sides of the mind?”
Daryl Sharp, Jung Lexicon
CG Jung, “ The narrow door of the shadow“


References

[1]  Eidolon (Wikipedia)

The missing half

I’ve been ruminating for months and months about what psychology really is. It’s treated like a science - most psychologists (including Jung!) want it to be a science. The reason Freud is still discussed in psychology classes, even though he was clearly full of shit, is because Freud shared this desire. Even Jung had some tendencies in this direction but, as a thoroughgoing empiricist, he knew when to give up this lifesaver and actually swim in the water. In fact, I think this was his whole point: his theory is based on reality... however, that reality includes spirituality! By refusing a priori to even look at the possibility that psychology has a spiritual aspect, these people are denying what is actually true, which is why they can never find out how to create deep, fundamental change in people.

What I’ve been struggling with is: how much of psychology is spiritual? This morning, as I was waking up, I realized that of course psychology is spiritual, because everything is spiritual! Psychology, even Jungian psychology, isn’t spirituality, but when you go deep enough it is. But this isn’t something unique to psychology alone. For example, go far enough into physics and again, you come to spirituality.

The thing is... everything is spiritual at its deepest place. Art, ecology, politics, farming, wood-working, cooking, everything. This is, in fact, our disease, the fact that we’ve forgotten this. Jung wrote about the “infrared” and “ultraviolet” ends of the archetypes; that is, our instincts and the spiritual archetypes that both live within us. The thing is, the entire world, all of reality and every part of it, has an infrared and an ultraviolet end. It’s just more obvious in psychology.

Until recently religion served to regulate the psyche. When religion lost its place of importance, we needed psychology to fill that gap. And the reason that modern psychology fails us over and over is that spirituality is a uniquely large and fundamental part, at every level, of the process of psychological healing, which is really actually spiritual healing. Instead, it’s techniques fail to create fundamental change in us but rather merely clean up the most shallow parts of our wounds (stick bandaids on them one might say). But what's not unique about psychology is the fact that it has a fundamental spiritual component. And how can that not be the case, since reality itself is spiritual, or ultraviolet, as well as infrared.

The illnesses of our time are caused by the lack of awareness of this spiritual side of reality. In fact, the illness of our time is at root this lack; everything else - the wars, the social and racial unrest, the looming nuclear destruction and actual ecological devastation - are just symptoms of this fundamental disease. The fact that we have forgotten this whole half of reality is the cause of everything wrong, not only in our individual lives but in the world at large. Just as our lives would fall apart if we failed to grasp the physical side, so it is falling apart because we have forgotten the spiritual side. Our world is reflecting this illness back on us. And as nothing in our individual lives will truly improve until we grasp this, so too will nothing fundamentally improve in the world until we come to understand both its halves.