Glossary: Projection

An automatic, psychological process where one’s own rejected, or simply invisible, personal qualities are unconsciously ejected out of one’s self onto others. These individuals can have traits that acts as a “hook” to catch our projection but this is not always the case, sometimes it’s just prejudice. Projections are always accompanied to strong emotions. The process of projection is behind all of the –isms (racism, sexism, etc.)

Projection means the expulsion of a subjective content into an object; it is the opposite of introjection. Accordingly, it is a process of dissimilation, by which a subjective content becomes alienated from the subject and is, so to speak, embodied in the object. The subject gets rid of painful, incompatible contents by projecting them.

- Jung

In spite of being disturbing and socially dangerous, projections also have meaning; for it is apparently only through projections that we can make ourselves conscious of certain unconscious processes. Through projections there arise, first of all, those fascinations, affects, entanglements which then force us to reflect on ourselves. There is no becoming conscious without the fires of emotion and suffering. The disturbance of adaptation which is closely linked with every projection leads, if all goes well, to reflection (if it goes badly it leads to homicide and murder.) Re-flexio, however, means that the image which has been “radiated” outward onto another object is “bent back” and returns to oneself.

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People in one’s immediate neighborhood experience our projections as emotional exaggerations. Personally, I listen almost unconsciously to the tone in which analysands speak about their marital partner, their friends and enemies, and I have discovered that I simply “switch over” whenever a certain undertone of hysterical exaggeration is heard together with the rest of the patient’s statement. Then one can no longer quite believe what is being said, but instead listens to an interesting (unconscious) self-presentation of the analysand. If one succeeds in that moment in relating such an outburst to a dream motif which pictures the statements figuratively, then there is often a good chance that the other will see that all that he has described so enthusiastically or so angrily is really in himself. The withdrawal of a projection, however, is almost always a moral shock. People with weak egos are often unable to tolerate this and resist violently. Jung once compared the ego with a person who navigates his sturdy or flimsy boat on the sea of the unconscious. He hauls fish (the contents of the unconscious) into his boat, but he cannot fill the boat (i.e., integrate unconscious contents) with more fish than the size of the boat allows; if he takes in too many the boat sinks. That is why the elucidation and withdrawal of projections is a critical matter. Schizoid and hysterical personalities can usually take only a little. With primitive people who have a weak ego, it is also advisable to leave projections unexplained. It has been my experience that then the older, more historical ways of dealing with autonomous complexes work better, namely that one refers to them as “spirits” which do not belong to the individual and thus one helps the analysand to resist such a “spirit” through some ritual or magic practice. This means that one takes literally what has been preserved as a figure of speech: “The devil has gotten into him” or that being in love is a “bewitchment.” However, any decisions about these inner moral insights will be made not by the ego and not by the analyst but by the Self. So we are in fact just as the Self sees us with its inner eyes which are always open, and all our own efforts toward self-knowledge must get to this point before any inner peace is possible.

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

Link

“The Hidden Source of Self”

Reference: “The Hidden Source of Self”

[Image from Down Home Essentials]

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

This is the full text of the subchapter of the book that one of the quotes from the post on projection comes from. It’s really great, very useful, so I’m including it here. Very well worth the read, as is anything from my favorite Jungian, the analyst Marie-Louise von Franz.



We probably project all the time, in everything we do; in other words, in addition to those other impressions which are conveyed by the senses, there are always psychosomatic influences from within, so that we have a general impression of our experiences; Gestalt psychology demonstrates this in many individual cases. Therefore we must either widen our concept of projection to such an extent that, like the East Indians, we look upon everything as projection; or we must draw a line between what we will refer to as projection and what is a relatively objective statement concerning outer objects. Jung suggested that the concept of projection be applied only where there is a serious disturbance of adaptation, that is to say, where either the person who is doing the projecting or all those in his immediate vicinity unanimously reject the statement in question. For the usual mixture of subjectivity in our image of reality, a mixture which is limitless, Jung uses the expression archaic identity, archaic because this was man’s original condition, namely one in which he saw all psychic processes in an “outside” – his good and evil thoughts as spirits, his affects as gods (Ares, Cupid), and so on. Only gradually were certain psychic processes, which were visualized before as exclusively “outside,” understood as processes within the experiencing subject himself, as for instance when the Stoic philosophers began to interpret the goddess Athena as insight, Ares as aggressive passion, Aphrodite as desire; this, so to speak, was the beginning of an “incarnation” of the gods in man.

How far such a process can go – a process, that is, of an increasing development of consciousness – is therefore not easy to foresee. We still know pitifully little about objective man, as Jung emphasized time and again. In spite of being disturbing and socially dangerous, projections also have meaning; for it is apparently only through projections that we can make ourselves conscious of certain unconscious processes. Through projections there arise, first of all, those fascinations, affects, entanglements which then force us to reflect on ourselves. There is no becoming conscious without the fires of emotion and suffering. The disturbance of adaptation which is closely linked with every projection leads, if all goes well, to reflection (if it goes badly it leads to homicide and murder.) Re-flexio, however, means that the image which has been “radiated” outward onto another object is “bent back” and returns to oneself. It is just because the symbol of the mirror has to do psychologically with the phenomenon of projection that it has, mythologically, such an enormous magical significance. In a mirror one can recognize oneself or see a projection. An old Scottish shepherd who lived a secluded life found a pocket mirror one day which a tourist had lost. He had never seen such a thing before. Time after time he looked at it, was amazed, shook his head, then took it home with him. His wife watched with increasing jealousy as, time and again, he furtively drew something out of his pocket, looked at it, smiled, put it back. When he was away one day she quickly took the mirror out of his coat pocket. Looking at it, she cried, “Aha! So this is the old witch he is running after now!”

That “constant flow of projections” – that is to say, that activity in which the subjective intrapsychic elements in our experience of the outer world does not disturb adaptation – Jung, as mentioned above, has called archaic identity, from which all genuine, true knowledge originates, for it is based on an instinctual, mystic participation with all things and all other people. “It is as if the ‘eyes of the background,’” as Jung describes it, “do the seeing in an impersonal act of perception.” These eyes see accurately. Why then do all those projections which disturb adaptation and which must be corrected through conscious insight also come from the same unconscious background? This is probably connected with what we call the dissociability of the psyche. Our entire psyche seems to consist of separate complexes which gather together into what one could call the psychic individuality, just as the Mendelian units of our hereditary factors together to form a unity.

We can clearly see in a small child, who still possesses a very labile ego-consciousness, how loosely the separate complexes live with each other in the moods which change like lightning and by means of which the youngster can switch from “loving child” to “devil” and vice versa, one moment completely affectionate, the next minute utterly engrossed in his play, one moment in deep despair, two minutes later joyful again, sucking a candy. These fluctuations decrease slowly as the conscious ego gradually builds itself up, but then the ego often experiences collisions of the individual complex-impulses within and must then learn to endure and control them. Once, when I was nine, I wanted to draw a picture of my dog whom I loved passionately, but he wouldn’t sit still. I was furious so I smacked him and shouted at him. I will never forget that dog’s innocent, offended look! I did not hit him again, but when I sat down to finish my drawing I felt clearly within me how the fury of my impatience and my love for the dog clashed painfully together. Jung conjectured once that ego consciousness first develops from collisions of the small child with the outer world and later from collisions of the growing ego with the impulses from its own inner world (as in the example of my fury with the dog). The “parliament of instincts,” as Konrad Lorenz would have called it, is not a peaceful organization within us; it is rather violent in there, and the President – the ego – often has difficulty asserting himself. From a practical point of view we can observe that whenever a complex becomes autonomous, then there always arise projections which disturb adaptation and blur the “mirror of inner truth.”

People in one’s immediate neighborhood experience our projections as emotional exaggerations. Personally, I listen almost unconsciously to the tone in which analysands speak about their marital partner, their friends and enemies, and I have discovered that I simply “switch over” whenever a certain undertone of hysterical exaggeration is heard together with the rest of the patient’s statement. Then one can no longer quite believe what is being said, but instead listens to an interesting (unconscious) self-presentation of the analysand. If one succeeds in that moment in relating such an outburst to a dream motif which pictures the statements figuratively, then there is often a good chance that the other will see that all that he has described so enthusiastically or so angrily is really in himself. The withdrawal of a projection, however, is almost always a moral shock. People with weak egos are often unable to tolerate this and resist violently. Jung once compared the ego with a person who navigates his sturdy or flimsy boat on the sea of the unconscious. He hauls fish (the contents of the unconscious) into his boat, but he cannot fill the boat (i.e., integrate unconscious contents) with more fish than the size of the boat allows; if he takes in too many the boat sinks. That is why the elucidation and withdrawal of projections is a critical matter. Schizoid and hysterical personalities can usually take only a little. With primitive people who have a weak ego, it is also advisable to leave projections unexplained. It has been my experience that then the older, more historical ways of dealing with autonomous complexes work better, namely that one refers to them as “spirits” which do not belong to the individual and thus one helps the analysand to resist such a “spirit” through some ritual or magic practice. This means that one takes literally what has been preserved as a figure of speech: “The devil has gotten into him” or that being in love is a “bewitchment.” However, any decisions about these inner moral insights will be made not by the ego and not by the analyst but by the Self. So we are in fact just as the Self sees us with its inner eyes which are always open, and all our own efforts toward self-knowledge must get to this point before any inner peace is possible.

However, the mandala (as the principle of the Self) has a strict mathematical order – like the symbol of the mirror – for, seen from a physical point of view, only those material surfaces which have no distortions, whose molecules are well-arranged, are capable of reflection. Therefore, it would appear as though the truth of one’s own being were being reflected there, in the innermost core of the soul – from there come our dreams, which show us how we really are, whereas the distorting projections come from partial complexes which have made themselves autonomous. This is why Zen masters tell their pupils, time after time, that they should free their “inner mirror” (Buddha-mind) of dust.

As long as we live, our reflection tries to penetrate into the deeper secrets of our innermost being, but what urges us to this is the Self itself, for which we search. It searches for itself in us. It seems to me that it is this secret to which a dream of Jung points, which he had after a severe illness in 1944, and which he relates in his memoirs. In this dream he is walking through a sunny, hilly landscape when he comes to a small wayside chapel. “The door was ajar, and I went in. To my surprise there was no image of the Virgin on the alter, and no crucifix either, but only a wonderful flower arrangement. But then I saw that on the floor in front of the altar, facing me, sat a yogi – in lotus posture, in deep meditation. When I looked at him more closely, I realized that he had my face. I started in profound fright, and awoke with the thought: ‘Aha, so he is the one who is meditating me. He has a dream and I am it.’ I knew that when he is awakened, I would no longer be.”

The dream, Jung continues,

is a parable: My Self retires into meditation and meditates my earthly form. To put it another way: it assumed human shape in order to enter three-dimensional existence, as if someone were putting on a diver’s suit in order to dive into the sea. When it renounces existence in the hereafter, the Self assumes a religious posture, as the chapel in the dream shows. In earthly form it can pass through the experiences of the three-dimensional world, and by greater awareness take a further step toward realization.

The figure of the yogi represents, as it were, Jung’s prenatal wholeness whose meditation “projects” the empirical reality of the ego. As a rule we see these things in reverse, we discover mandalas in the products of the unconscious and express therewith our idea of wholeness. Our basis is ego-consciousness, a field of lights centered upon the focal point of the ego. From that point we look out upon an enigmatic world of obscurity and do not know how far its shadowy forms are caused by our consciousness and how far they possess a reality of their own. The tendency of the dream, writes Jung,

is to effect a reversal of the relationship between ego-consciousness and the unconscious, and to represent the unconscious as the generator of the empirical personality. This reversal suggests that in the opinion of the “Other side,” our unconscious existence is the real one and our conscious world a kind of illusion, an apparent reality constructed for a specific purpose… Unconscious wholeness therefore seems to me the true spiritus rector of all biological and psychic events. Here is a principle which strives for total realization – which in man’s case signifies the attainment of total consciousness. Attainment of consciousness is culture in the broadest sense, and self-knowledge is therefore the heart and essence of this process. The Oriental attributes unquestionably divine significance to the Self, and according to the ancient Christian view of self-knowledge is the road to knowledge of God.

You see why I have called this paper “The Hidden Source of Self-Knowledge”; it lies within us and yet is an unfathomable secret, a complete cosmos which we have only begun to explore.

- Marie-Louise von Franz, Dreams

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”

- Zhuangzi

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)

Glossary: Differentiation

Individuation is a process of differentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual personality.

– Carl Jung


Separating the parts from the whole. The psyche begins as an undifferentiated mass, with everything mixed up together. Our task throughout our lives – and our task collectively, as a society – is to separate this archaic (ancient, primitive) mass into its constituent parts, and then to hold all the opposites together at the same time. This is essentially what individuation, or becoming one’s whole self, is all about.

Differentiation means the development of differences, the separation of parts from a whole. In this work I employ the concept chiefly in respect to psychological functions. So long as one function is still so merged with one or more of the other functions – as for example thinking with feeling, or feeling with sensation, etc. – as to be quite unable to appear alone, it is in an archaic state, and therefore undifferentiated, i.e. it is not separated out as a special part from the whole having its own independent existence. An undifferentiated thinking is incapable of thinking apart from other functions, i.e. it is constantly mixed up with sensations, feelings, or intuitions; such thinking may, for instance, become blended with sensations and phantasies, as exemplified in the sexualization (Freud) of feeling and thinking in neurosis. The undifferentiated function is also commonly characterized by the qualities of ambivalency and ambitendency, i.e. every positive brings with it an equally strong negative, whereby characteristic inhibitions spring up in the application of the undifferentiated function. Such a function suffers also from a fusing together of its individual parts; thus an undifferentiated faculty of sensation, for instance, is impaired through an amalgamation of the separate spheres of sensation (“audition coloriee”), and undifferentiated feeling through confounding hatred with love. Just so far as a function is wholly or mainly unconscious is it also undifferentiated, i.e. it is not only fused together in its parts but also merged with other functions.

Differentiation consists in the separation of the selected function from other functions, and in the separation of its individual parts from each other. Without differentiation direction [introversion and extroversion] is impossible, since the direction of a function is dependent upon the isolation and exclusion of the irrelevant. Through fusion with what is irrelevant, direction becomes impossible; only a differentiated function proves itself capable of direction.

- Carl Jung (taken from PaladinX's post on Personality Cafe)

"Clean, stainless. Unbeaten."

[Image from The Goddess Garden]

Yes. It is the withdrawal from the emotions; you are no longer identical with them. If you succeed in remembering yourself, if you succeed in making a difference between yourself and that outburst of passion, then you discover the Self; you begin to individuate.

So in anahata individuation begins. But here again you are likely to get an inflation. Individuation is not that you become an ego – you would then become an individualist. You know, an individualist is a man who did not succeed in individuating; he is a philosophically distilled egotist.

Individuation is becoming that thing which is not the ego, and that is very strange. Therefore nobody understands what the Self is, because the Self is just the thing which you are not, which is not the ego. The ego discovers itself as being a mere appendix of the Self in a sort of loose connection. For the ego is always far down in muladhara and suddenly becomes aware of something up above in the fourth story, in anahata, and that is the Self.

Now, if anybody makes the mistake of thinking that he lives at the same time in the basement and on the fourth story, that he is the purusha himself, he is crazy. He is what the German very aptly call verrückt, carried off his feet up to somewhere else. He just sits up there and spins. We are allowed to behold only the purusha, to behold his feet up there. But we are not the purusha; that is a symbol that expresses the impersonal process.

The Self is something exceedingly impersonal, exceedingly objective. If you function in your Self you are not yourself – that is what you feel. You have to do it as if you were a stranger: you will buy as if you did not buy; you will sell as if you did not sell. Or, as St. Paul expresses it, “But it is not I that lives, it is Christ that liveth in me,” meaning that his life had become an objective life, not his own life but the life of a greater one, the purusha.

- Carl Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga (Carl Jung Depth Psychology)

Anahata or heart chakra is the fourth primary chakra... In Sanskrit, anahata means "unhurt, unstruck, and unbeaten". Anahata Nad refers to the Vedic concept of unstruck sound (the sound of the celestial realm). Anahata is associated with balance, calmness, and serenity.

In Sanskrit Anahata means "sound produced without touching two parts" and at the same time it means "pure" or "clean, stainless". The name of this chakra signifies the state of freshness that appears when we are able to become detached and to look at the different and apparently contradictory experiences of life with a state of openness (expansion). Normally we are not used to the effect produced by the confrontation of the two opposite forces. At the level of Anahata chakra appears the possibility to integrate the two opposite forces and obtain the effect, without the two forces being confronted. This energy is specific to cooperation and integration, which brings peace and a new perspective in a world which, up to this level was made only of a more or less conscious confrontation between opposite forces.

- Anahata (Wikipedia)


Just throwing this out there because it's very useful. One of the most impactful practices I ever developed was learning how to deal with emotions, to step back from them, and observe them and myself from a distance. We think we have our emotions but our emotions really have us; when in the grip of a passion our egos become eclipsed, possessed. It's not easy to get yourself unpossessed - I still often fail - but without space between your feelings and yourself you can't begin to discriminate "ego" from "not ego."

Years ago I developed the following practice: When I feel something painful, instead of trying to escape I lean into it. I envision the emotion as crashing waves that I move into. Each crash then becomes smaller and smaller, until they eventually die out. All passions, no matter how intense, will die out, but only if you let them have space in your mind and in your heart. Otherwise, they become a festering wound that becomes untouchable. Before teaching myself this, I would be overwhelmed with the emotion. I couldn't let myself feel and process anything because it was so overwhelming and painful; it felt like annihilation. The idea that I could actually endure the pain, and survive it, was a revelatory, an epiphany.

Marie-Louise von Franz once wrote (I forget where and I can't find it!) that the dragon - one's pain and suffering - has to burn itself out. The cure for the dragon's fire is it's own fire; you just have to let the flames cook you. But this suffering is really a true and caring friend who brings us precious gifts that allow us to grow.

There is a secret love hiding in each problem.

The psyche is highly flammable material. So we are always wrapping things in asbestos, keeping our images and fantasies at arm's length because they are so full of love.

- James Hillman

MBTI: The Cognitive Functions

[Image from Undark]


Jung’s theory of the cognitive functions is the foundation upon which the entire MBTI is built. Without this basic understanding, the MBTI is nothing more than a hazy, unscientific, and often inaccurate collection of personality traits. Considering the fact that our personality changes drastically depending on how healthy we are – that is, how many of the functions we’ve integrated – the MBTI as it’s generally practiced isn’t really much better than astrology.

Knowing a person’s functions, and what roles they play in their psyche, helps you to truly understand them: you know their strengths and their weaknesses; you know what makes them anxious, and what makes them feel good; and you know why they can't seem to get their act together in certain areas, or why they flip out over what seems to you to be trivial matters. Knowing these things gives us compassion and understanding for each other… and ourselves. We can understand and have compassion for our own weaknesses and fears, and take responsibility for our own ugliness when we have to, without censure or contempt but with clear eyed tenderness. And this kindness to ourselves allows us to be kind to others in turn.

A good way to think of the functions is as organs of the psyche. Just as we have different organs that perform various necessary tasks in the body, we also have different psychological organs that carry out various necessary mental and emotional tasks. These four psychological organs are sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking.


The Perceiving Functions

These two root functions are the ways in which we take in information about the world around us; through our intuition and through our physical senses. The sensation function allows to navigate physical reality. It’s focus is on what we can perceive with our five senses. The intuition function is about everything but what we can perceive with our senses; where did this come from? Where is it going? What do I want to do with it? Jung called these the irrational functions because they simply are, we aren’t making any judgments. We use the other two functions to do that.


The Judging Functions

These are the ways in which we make sense of the impressions we take in through our perceiving functions; how we feel about the thing, or what we think about it. Thinking tells us what the thing is; is it true or not? Does it make sense? What, if any, use does it have? Thinking is how we connect with the world constructively, to create order. Feeling tells us whether we like a thing or not, if it’s good or bad. Feeling is where we get our morals from, as well as how we connect with others emotionally. These root functions help us evaluate the information we take in with our intuition and sensation. Jung called these the rational functions because these are the psychological organs we use to make decisions.


Attitudes

This is simply whether a function is introverted or extroverted, splitting each root function into two branch functions. A function's attitude doesn’t necessarily have to do with how sociable one is; you can be introverted and love to socialize with others, like the INFJ or ISFJ. Or you can be extroverted and not particularly care about people’s feelings, like the ESTJ or ENTJ. Extroversion and introversion simply have to do with whether or not the function is directed outwards, towards objects and the world… or inwards, towards our inner selves.

Extroverted functions are the easiest to see because they’re extroverted in people; even introverts have to extrovert sometimes, which is when we usually pull out our secondary parent function, which is always the opposite attitude as our main function. Let’s take ISTJs; the ISTJ heroine is Si. As this is introverted they don’t use that particular function to interact with others and the world, instead they use their second strongest function, Te. This is why ISTJs can sometimes seem like really subdued ESTJs. The same goes for all the introverted types.

The general-attitude types, as I have pointed out more than once, are differentiated by their particular attitude to the object. The introvert's attitude to the object is an abstracting one; at bottom, he is always facing the problem of how libido can be withdrawn from the object, as though an attempted ascendancy on the part of the object had to be continually frustrated. The extravert, on the contrary, maintains a positive relation to the object. To such an extent does he affirm its importance that his subjective attitude is continually being orientated by, and related to the object. And found, the object can never have sufficient value; for him, therefore, its importance must always be paramount.

- Jung, Psychological Types

So, now we've covered the basics. Let’s see how each branch function expresses itself.


Introverted Sensation (Si)

Faraam Knight (Dark Souls)

[Image from BigBadToyStore]

“I am healthy, stable and have a roof over my head, therefore I exist” 
- Lastrevio

Si is one of the most difficult to understand of the functions as, although it deals with physical reality, it deals with our inner experience of that external physical reality. It, literally, is our ability to sense reality from within our bodies. This leads to Si doms to being vigilant and on guard against any possible threat. Dominant Si gives an individual a robust sense of tradition, preservation, duty, and conscientiousness. Personality Hacker calls this function Memory as people use it to learn information based on their memories. It wants reliable information, which is why it so adamantly insists on personal experience or expert opinion. Si is the hero function of the ISTJs and ISFJs.

One thing I noticed about Si in my ISFJ fiancé is how long it takes for it to process information. As an INTP – with Ne as my second strongest function – I tend to react almost even before seeing something. I almost instantly know what it is (I’m sure ENTPs, with dominant Ne, are even faster and more accurate.) My fiancé, on the other hand, takes a good 3 or 4 seconds to react. My theory is that the thing he’s looking at has to become a memory for him in order for him to understand it; it literally has to move from present to past. I’ve heard Si described as being like clay that takes impressions from all our experiences and holds onto them forever in the form of a statue (I think this was CS Joseph but I can’t find it now.)

In describing herself, [Emma Jung] said that the introverted sensation type was like a highly sensitized photographic plate. When somebody comes in the room, such a type notices the way the person comes in, the hair, the expression on the face, the clothes, and the way the person walks. All this makes a very precise impression on the introverted sensation type; every detail is absorbed. The impression comes from the object to the subject. It is as though a stone fell into deep water: the impression falls deeper and deeper and sinks in. Outwardly... you do not know what is going on within [the IS]. He looks like a piece of wood with no reaction at all - unless he reacts with one of the auxiliary functions, thinking or feeling. But inwardly the impression is being absorbed.

- Marie-Louise von Franz, Lectures on Jung's Typology

Extroverted Sensation (Se)

Joe (Megalobox)

[Image from SyFy Wire]

“I can move my body, therefore I exist” 
- Lastrevio

If Si is memory and the past, then Se is the absolute present. Types that have dominant Se are very present focused. Personality Hacker describes Se as a “tennis hop;” you know how tennis players, or boxers, are always bopping around, even when they aren’t actively doing something? This hop allows these athletes to instantly react to anything that comes at them, and this is exactly what Se doms do with everything in their lives at every moment all the time. If Si wants reliable information, Se wants to verify information in real time through their interactions with the world. Se is always ready for what the world has to throw at them. This can lead to those with strong Se to being adrenaline junkies as it's deeply satisfying to these types when something exciting happens that they can react to powerfully and with skill.

Where Si loves having great experiences, Se loves giving others great experiences. Individuals with dominant Se – ESTP and ESFP – will have an impeccable but relaxed relationship with physical reality. Se doms make the world both comfortable and pleasing to the senses for the rest of us.

The extraverted sensation type is… someone whose gift… is to sense and relate in a concrete and practical way to outer objects. Such people observe everything, smell everything, and on entering a room know almost at once how many people are present. Afterward, they always know whether Mrs. So-and-So was there and what dress she had on.

The ES type has the best photographic apparatus... This is why this type is found among the good mountaineers, engineers and business people, all of whom have a wide and accurate awareness of outer reality in all its differentiations.

- Marie-Louise von Franz, Lectures on Jung's Typology


Introverted Intuition (Ni)

[Image from MAESTROVIEJO]

“I am secure and at peace therefore I exist”
- Lastrevio

If Si is about the past, and Se the present, then Ni is about the future… specifically, one’s own future. Ni is concerned with one’s goals, desires, plans for the future. Types with dominant Ni are the INTJs and the INFJs. Personality Hacker calls this function Perspectives. The intuitive functions differ from the sensation functions in that they’re concerned with what ifs and future possibilities, the connections between things, everything that isn’t present in our physical reality. Intuition is about pattern recognition; it takes two dots and extrapolates an entire scene from them. Intuition takes speculative leaps into the unknown.

Like Si, Ni is turned inward, in a ruminatory fashion. Ni attends to the impressions made on it by its experiences (Se). It's is deeply connected to it's opposite; unless you know what is, you can't figure out what you want for your future.

Ni attends to all the thoughts and feelings that form in its inner mind. Where Se loves and is deeply satisfied by physical interaction, Ni loves and is deeply satisfied with insight. And unlike Ne, which is aware of the collective future, Ni is concerned with one’s own future. It’s the sniper rifle to Ne’s shotgun; Ne might be aware of the possibilities for the entire planet, but only for the near future. Ni is laser focused on the individual’s future, which means it can project much further into that future.

The introverted intuitive has the same capacity as the extraverted intuitive for smelling out the future… But his intuition is turned within, and therefore he is primarily the type of the religious prophet, of the seer. On a primitive level, he is the shaman who knows what the gods and the ghosts and the ancestral spirits are planning... In psychological language... he knows about the slow processes which go on in the collective unconscious, the archetypal changes, and he communicates them to society. The prophets of the Old Testament, for instance, were people who, while the children of Israel were happily asleep – as the masses always are – from time to time told them what Yahweh’s real intentions were, what he was doing now, and what he wanted his people to do. The people generally did not enjoy hearing these messages.

- Marie-Louise von Franz, Lectures on Jung's Typology


Extroverted Intuition (Ne)

Aloy (Horizon Zero Dawn)

[Image from MSPowerUser]

“I am free therefore I exist”
- Lastrevio

While both Ni and Ne are concerned with connections and possibilities Ne is about these things for everybody, not just themselves. As such, they tend to not see as far into the future as Ni... in fact, Ne is almost as present focused as Se, but as regards the connections between things and not the things themselves. Ne is about latency, that which is present but not yet visible; all that exists as potential. It knows what is just about to be born. It's like being a really good card player, knowing the hands that others probably have based on what's already made it's appearance due to Si, it's connected opposite. If you know what was (Si) you know what can be (Ne). Ne doms are ENTP and ENFP.

Extroverted Intuition can be likened to having an excellent sense of smell. ENTPs and ENFPs are often able to sniff out possibilities well before anyone else can, and their ability to make these kinds of predictions is uncanny. They love to find the next new big, exciting, fun thing, start it up, and then leave it to others to finish while they kite off to discover the next amazing thing.

Ne loves to explore the world – hence the Personality Hacker's nickname, Exploration – testing what happens when it tries new things, just to see what will happen. Ne's attitude is always “Let's try it and see!” Someone with high Ne is the probably worst person to put near a big red button because they will really want to push it to see what will happen. But this is how Ne is able to discover all the patterns in nature that allows it to predict the future so well.

Intuition is a function by which we conceive possibilities. A sensation type would call this object a bell, but a child would imagine all sorts of things you could do with it. It could be a church tower, this book could be a village, etc. In everything there is a possibility of a development… Intuition needs to look at things from afar or vaguely in order to function, so as to get a certain hunch from the unconscious, to half shut the eyes and not look at facts too closely. If one looks at things too precisely, the focus is on facts, and then the hunch cannot come through. That is the way intuitives tend to be unpunctual and vague… One finds them wherever there is something new brewing, even in the more spiritual realms. They will always be in the advance movement. It is generally the creative artist who creates the future. A civilization which has no creative people is doomed. So the person who is really in touch with the future, with the germs of the future, is the creative personality. Now the extraverted intuitive, because he is capable of sniffing the wind and knowing what the weather will be tomorrow, will see that this perhaps completely unknown painter or writer is the man of tomorrow, and therefore he will be fascinated. His intuition can recognize the value of such a creative person.”

- Marie-Louise von Franz, Lectures on Jung's Typology


Introverted Feeling (Fi)

Harriet Tubman mural (Michael Rosato)

[Image from CNN]

“I feel, therefore I exist”
- Lastrevio

We now come to the first of our four judging functions; these are the functions we use to make decisions. The feeling function is all about what I like or not, what is good or bad. It uses feeling to make decisions. Fi turns this inwards; what do I feel is good or bad? Fi doesn’t care what you think, it needs to find for itself what is moral or not. Personality Hacker calls this function Authenticity, and it’s highest concern is being as true to oneself as possible. The types with Fi hero are ISFP and INFP.

Fi excels at being aware of all the different voices inside of us, pulling us in different directions, and deciding which one is right. In fact, those with strong Fi - Fi in the hero/one or parent roles - find it nearly impossible to go against their convictions, once they figure out what they are. This takes time and attention; Fi often doesn’t know what it actually wants until it’s already in the middle of doing something. But, being attuned to the inner voices of support – or protest – allows those with strong Fi to always eventually know which option is the right one for them.

Fi is the wellspring of our personal morals; society can tell us what the ethical thing is, what it collectively agrees is correct, but Fi demands that we do the hard work of figuring these things out for ourselves. It’s the German hiding Jews from the Nazis, or the activist leaving water and food for migrants in the harsh desert.

Jung says in Psychological Types that the saying “still waters run deep” applies to this type. They have a highly differentiated scale of values, but they do not express them outwardly; they are affected by them within. One often finds the introverted feeling type in the background where important and valuable events are taking place, as if their introverted feeling had told them “that is the real thing.” With a kind of silent loyalty, and without any explanation, they turn up in places where important and valuable inner facts, archetypal constellations, are to be found. They also generally exert a positive secret influence on their surroundings by setting standards. The others observe them, and though they say nothing, for they are too introverted to express themselves much, they set certain standards. Introverted feeling types, for instance, very often form the ethical back bone of a group: without irritating the others by preaching moral or ethical precepts, they themselves have such correct standards of ethical values that they secretly emanate a positive influence on those around them. One has to behave correctly because they have the right kind of value standard, which always suggestively forces one to be decent if they are present. Their differentiated introverted feeling sees what is inwardly the really important factor.

- Marie-Louise von Franz, Lectures on Jung's Typology

Extroverted Feeling (Fe)

[Image from The Advertising Archives]

“I am loved, therefore I exist”
- Lastrevio

Where Fi is about morals, or what I feel is right, Fe is about ethics, or what we collectively as a society agree is right. Personality Hacker calls this function Harmony, and it’s main concern is with maintaining emotional harmony amongst the group. In the same way that extroverted sensors are aware of the physical reality around them, extroverted feelers are acutely aware of the feelings of people around them. Types with Fe heroes are the ESFJs and ENFJs.

Where Fi seeks to be true to itself, Fe desires harmony, unanimity, affinity, and togetherness. Can you see how the two attitudes of the same function clash with each other? Fi wants to be its own thing, Fe wants everyone to be one. This kind of conflict obviously can lead dissension, and an inability to understand the other. An example are two relatives of mine, a mother (an ESFJ) and her adult daughter (an ISFP). They often disagree over things and struggle to understand each other; the ISFP gets frustrated by her mother’s tendency to caretake for people who she considers unworthy – people who are abusive, or self-destructive – while her ESFJ mother is dismayed by what she sees as her daughter’s lack of compassion and loyalty (side note; ISFPs are extremely loyal, but only to those they feel deserve it.) Their fights are invariably over differences in perspective resulting from their opposite heroine functions.

Fe’s constant concern is that everyone is happy and their needs are being met. When average to unhealthy it can lead to covert contracts ("I did this thing for you that you didn't ask for so now you have to do X."), but in developed individuals, Fe gives compassion, empathy, and a devotion to all living creatures.

The extroverted feeling type…  makes friends very easily, will have very few illusions about people, but will be capable of evaluating their positive and negative sides appropriately. These are well-adjusted, very reasonable people who roll along amiably through society, can get what they want quite easily, and can somehow arrange it that everybody is willing to give them what they want. They lubricate their surroundings so marvelously that life goes along very easily. You find them frequently among women, and they generally have a very happy family life with a lot of friends. Only if they are in someway neurotically dissociated do they become a bit theatrical and a little mechanical and calculating. If one goes to lunch and party with an extroverted feeling type she (or he) is capable of saying little things like “What a nice day it is today, I am so glad to see you again, I haven’t seen you for a long time!” And they really mean it! With that the car is lubricated, and the party goes. One feels happy and warmed up. They spread a kind of atmosphere of acceptance, and it is agreeable: “We appreciate each other, so we are going to have a good day together.” They make those in their surroundings feel wonderful, and in the midst of that they swim along happily and create a pleasant social atmosphere. Only if they overdo it, or their extroverted feeling is already worn out and they therefore should start to think, do you notice that this becomes a bit of a habit, that it becomes a phrase which they say mechanically. For instance, I once noticed an extroverted feeling type, on a dreadful day when there was a horrible fog outside, saying mechanically: “Isn’t it a wonderful day!” I thought, “Oh dear, your main function is rattling!”

- Marie-Louise von Franz, Lectures on Jung's Typology

Introverted Thinking (Ti)

"Aristotle" (Jusepe de Ribera)

[Image from Hand Made Piece]

“I think, therefore I exist”
- Lastrevio

Where Fi is concerned with what I feel, Ti is concerned with what I think. And similar to Fi, Ti doesn’t care what you think. It doesn’t care what your credentials are, or how many people agree with you. It understands that truth isn’t a popularity contest. A thing is either true or it isn’t, regardless of who that truth comes from, or how popular it is. Ti doms are INTPs and ISTPs.

Ti is all about logic; it uses deductive reasoning (“All marsupials are mammals > wombats are marsupials > therefore, wombats are mammals”) and abductive reasoning (deciding what the most likely explanation for a mystery then testing the hypothesis; i.e. when I get home I find the dog along with a bunch of torn paper > I hypothesize that the dog tore the paper > I check the video > turns out my niece tore the paper.)

As it’s a thinking function Ti is concerned with impersonal criteria. It uses reason to decide whether or not a thing is true based on an internal judgment, not the external judgment of the collective. Ti works hard to – and is generally successful at – removing what it sees as bias from data (personal feelings, the feelings or thoughts of others, etc.) It scans the data for inconsistencies and incongruities, looking for that which is consistent and congruent to build its mental edifice with, like a magpie. Personality Hacker calls this function Accuracy, and that is its goal.

Like Te, it wants to create order. Unlike Te though, it seeks to do so internally. If Fi goes spelunking in the depths of their heart, Ti creates mental models of stunning complexity. Ti loves the beautiful idea, it loves symmetry and order. Einstein, probably an INTP, once said God doesn’t play dice with the universe, and his famous equation, E=mc2, is an exemplar of the veracity and elegance Ti strives for.

The main activity of this type is not so much trying to establish order in outer objects; it is more concerned with ideas. Someone would say that one should not start with facts, but first clarify one’s ideas, would belong to the introverted thinking type. His wish to bring order into life starts off with the idea that if one is muddle-headed from the start, one will never get anywhere. It is first necessary to know what ideas to follow and where they come from; one must clean up muddle-headedness by digging into the background of one’s thoughts. All philosophy is concerned with the logical processes of the human mind, with the building up of ideas. This is the realm where introverted thinking is mostly at work. In science these are the people who are perpetually trying to prevent their colleagues from getting lost in experiments and who, from time to time, try to get back to basic concepts and ask what we are really doing mentally. In physics, there is generally one professor for practical physics and another for theoretical physics: one lectures on the Wilson Chamber and the building up of experiments, the other on mathematical principles and the theory of science. In all the various sciences there are always those who try to clean out the basic theories of their scientific realm... The introverted thinking type always goes back to the subjective idea, namely, to what the subject is doing in the whole matter.

- Marie-Louise von Franz, Lectures on Jung's Typology


Extroverted Thinking (Te)

Olivier Mira Armstrong (Fullmetal Alchemist)

[Image from Mini Tokyo]

“The world is in order, therefore I exist”
- Lastrevio

Te just wants to know what works. As it’s a thinking function Te doesn’t care what you or anyone else feel; like Ti, it really only cares about impersonal criteria in its judgments. Personality Hacker calls this function Efficiency, because Te wants to take their reason and apply it to the real world in the best, most efficient way possible (contrasting with Ti, which generally doesn’t care about the practical implications of their theorizing, just that it’s accurate, true, and elegant.) The two types with dominant Te are ESTJ and ENTJ.

Where Ti is about logic – deductive and abductive reasoning – Te is all about statistics, or inductive reasoning. Let’s say there’s a cliff that 100 people have jumped off, and each one of those people died. Inductive reasoning says: 100% of people who jumped from this cliff died > therefore, if you jump off the cliff you will die. It doesn’t look at the physics, the force, the velocity, trying to predict based on theories if you will die, it just looks at the numbers.

Te is all about metrics; it wants to measure progress. It cares about results, and measurements tell Te how close to their goals they are. Measurements also allow you to try something, test it, then make adjustments and repeat, improving with each cycle. The saying “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” is very Te as it’s all about managing things.

This type is to be found among organizers, people in high office and government positions, in business, in law and among scientists. They can compile useful encyclopedias. They dig up all the dust in old libraries and do away with the inhibiting factors in science which are caused by clumsiness or laziness or a lack of clarity in language. The extroverted thinking type establishes order by taking a definite stand and saying, “If we say so and so, we mean so-and-so.” They put clarifying order into the outer situation. At a business meeting, such a man will say that one should get at the basic facts and then see how to proceed. A lawyer who has to listen to all the chaotic reports of contending parties is able, with his superior thinking function, to see which are the real conflicts and which the pseudo-contentions, and then to arrange a solution satisfactory to all parties. The emphasis will always be on the object, not the idea. Such a lawyer will not fight for the idea of democracy, or domestic peace; his whole mind will be absorbed with and swallowed up by the outer objective situation.

- Marie-Louise von Franz, Lectures on Jung's Typology

So these are overviews of the 8 psychological functions, the basis of Jungian typology. The charts below distill the main points of each of the 8 branch functions, starting with the perceiving functions:

Perceiving Functions

And here are the judging functions:

Judging Functions

Once you know your type understanding the branch functions, combined with John Beebe's 8 function model, will give you a very good idea of your strengths, weaknesses, and what you need to do to grow. Future posts will do that very thing, exploring how each type expresses the various functions.

Posts

The Function Roles
The Houses
The Core Complexes
The Sodalities
How to type

Working with the MBTI

My MBTI story


See also

Antonia Dodge, “Why Personality Hacker Uses Nicknames For The 8 Jungian Cognitive Functions” (Personality Hacker)
Marie-Louise von Franz, Lectures on Typology
Marie-Louise von Franz, Psychotherapy
C.G. Jung, Psychological Types
Lastrevio, “The 8 cognitive roles in-depth explanation”