The main (but not only) attitude dualities that Jung defines are the following:
- Consciousness and the unconscious. The "presence of two attitudes is extremely frequent, one conscious and the other unconscious. This means that consciousness has a constellation of contents different from that of the unconscious, a duality particularly evident in neurosis."
- Extraversion and introversion. This pair is so elementary to Jung's theory of types that he labeled them the "attitude-types."
- Rational and irrational attitudes. "I conceive reason as an attitude." The rational attitude subdivides into the thinking and feeling psychological functions, each with its attitude. The irrational attitude subdivides into the sensing and intuition psychological functions, each with its attitude. "There is thus a typical thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude."
- Individual and social attitudes. Many of the latter are "isms."
The MBTI write-ups limit the use of "attitude" to the extraversion-introversion (EI) and judging-perceiving (JP) indexes.
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The JP index is sometimes referred to as an orientation to the outer world and sometimes JP is classified as an "attitude." In Jungian terminology the term attitude is restricted to EI. In MBTI terminology attitude can include EI and also JP.
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The above MBTI Manual statement, "is restricted to EI," is directly contradicted by Jung's statement above that there is "a typical thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude" and by his other uses of the term "attitude". Regardless of whether the MBTI simplification (or oversimplification) of Jung can be attributed to Myers,
Gifts Differing refers only to the "EI preference", consistently avoiding the label "attitude." Regarding the JP index, in
Gifts Differing Myers does use the terms "the
perceptive attitude and the
judging attitude." The JP index corresponds to the irrational and rational attitudes Jung describes, except that the MBTI focuses on the preferred orientation in the outer world in order to identify the function hierarchy. To be consistent with Jung, it can be noted that a rational extraverted preference is accompanied by an irrational introverted preference.