Are Jung's Functions about Humans, Robots, or Neither?

[Mal12345]

Excerpted from: Was that really me?: how everyday stress brings out our hidden personality By Naomi L. Quenk

PP 137-38 recounts the story of an INTP mother who is having difficulty with her teenaged son who had a recent stay in a mental institution. After he was released from the hospital, she began to realize he was falling back on his pre-institution badness (staying out overnight, etc.).

His INTP mother tried logic and reasoning on him for a few days, but he only gave her rebellious responses in return. Finally, she just broke down and sobbed to him,

"Jim, I can't tell you how awful this is for me. At work, I can't concentrate. I'm distracted all the time. When I know it's almost time for you to get out of school, I start getting sick to my stomach. I can't eat lunch; I become ill. I'm so worried about what might be happening to you, that you might be hurt or in trouble and I wouldn't even know."

Seeing how he was hurting his mother this way, Jim relented and actually began looking for ways to work on his problems that she never would have thought up.

Her explanation for her success: "What I now see is that my long, careful appeals to his reason - his inferior function - had not worked. They hadn't ever worked... In despair and helplessness, I fell into the grip of my inferior function and expressed spontaneous Feeling, something he had rarely, if ever, seen me do. This spoke to his Dominant function and brought out his truest judgment - that he loved me and wanted me to be happy. Every other consideration fell by the wayside; all he wanted to do was relieve the genuine anguish he sensed in me."

 

[Mal12345]

I just wanted to point out this Naomi L. Quenk book in particular. The real-life examples in this book are rife with examples of functions coming out as feelings - not as "archetypes" and "images." People are treated, not in a quaint Jungian sense, as robots with functions, but as humans with feelings.

There are many good points to be made about the anecdotes related in this book.

 

[lunalum]

The functions are about the other dimension. You know, that one where humans actually make sense



...Eh, I don't think Jung made people robots with functions.... the functions themselves are just really abstract things but I think they were still described as pretty human. What that excerpt does is give a example of balancing one's perspectives with another's in a very real sort of situation.

 

[Mal12345]

The functions are about the other dimension. You know, that one where humans actually make sense



...Eh, I don't think Jung made people robots with functions.... the functions themselves are just really abstract things but I think they were still described as pretty human. What that excerpt does is give a example of balancing one's perspectives with another's in a very real sort of situation.

Of course the context of it all is the human psyche. But the functions are in no way described as human when the vast arena of emotions is omitted from his analysis of the psyche. His references to archetypes and images are, in my mind, self-descriptions. Consider for example the hallucinatory phase Jung went through when he was 38. And his focus on dream imagery relates back to some intense dreams he had as a small child. All this focus on the unconscious doesn't necessarily relate to anybody else. His lack of feeling analysis is just representative of the way Jung saw himself, thus how he related to everybody else. Jung's greatest patient was himself.

I recommend the book, not so much for its analysis of inferiors and shadows, but for revealing, as you pointed out, the other dimension. But that dimension is the most important.

 

[INTP]

I dont get where you got that robot association to jung..

Positive as well as negative occurrences can constellate the inferior counter-function. When this happens, sensitiveness appears. Sensi-tiveness is a sure sign of of the presence of inferiority. This provides the psychological basis for discord and misunderstanding, not only as between two people, but also in ourselves. The essence of the inferior function is autonomy: it is independent, it attacks, it fascinates and so spins us about that we are no longer masters of ourselves and can no longer rightly distinguish between ourselves and others["The Problem of the Attitude-Type," CW 7, par. 85.]

 

[Mal12345]

I dont get where you got that robot association to jung..

So you found one human quote.

 

[INTP]

So you found one human quote.

This human stuff is what the functions are about from jungs point of view..

You not knowing it, doesent mean that its not true.

And that quote is one of the main ideas about the inferior.

If you look typology from superficial point of view, you need to do some reduction. This kinda means that you are forced to reduce what makes human mind a human mind, because human mind is really complex system. Now if you look at computers/robot "mind", its basically an human mind that has been reduced to a point where its not seen even as a living thing.
In order to explain an human mind you need to do some reduction, not just because we dont know the whole mind, but also because its too much external info for people to handle. Jung does an exceptionally good work at explaining the human mind as close as it possibly can be explained AND still keep the human aspect while doing so.
Now if you just read some part here and there and some crappy superficial internet sources without ever seeing the whole picture, your view on his work isnt complete and will seem like some computer system to you. Even tho it seems like a computer system to you, it doesent mean that its true, you would know that if you had understood what E, I and those images are about

 

[Mal12345]

This human stuff is what the functions are about from jungs point of view..

You not knowing it, doesent mean that its not true.

And that quote is one of the main ideas about the inferior.

I know, it's just as described in the book "Was That Really Me?" It's a book that somehow manages to talk about functions on the human level instead of skirting around the real subject of it all.

And anyway, I can easily discuss the topic of acting out of character ("was that really me?") without reference to any functions. And I am suspicious of trying to reduce human behavior to a pattern because of the ad hoc nature of finding only those examples which fit the pattern.

If you look typology from superficial point of view, you need to do some reduction. This kinda means that you are forced to reduce what makes human mind a human mind, because human mind is really complex system. Now if you look at computers/robot "mind", its basically an human mind that has been reduced to a point where its not seen even as a living thing.
In order to explain an human mind you need to do some reduction, not just because we dont know the whole mind, but also because its too much external info for people to handle. Jung does an exceptionally good work at explaining the human mind as close as it possibly can be explained AND still keep the human aspect while doing so.
Now if you just read some part here and there and some crappy superficial internet sources without ever seeing the whole picture, your view on his work isnt complete and will seem like some computer system to you. Even tho it seems like a computer system to you, it doesent mean that its true, you would know that if you had understood what E, I and those images are about

I'm pretty sure I explained what those images are about? Didn't I say above they were about Jung's personal method of thinking? Because, I'll tell you, I get no sense of recognition from Psychological Types. But if I ever start hallucinating, I'll be sure to check it out again.

 

[INTP]

I know, it's just as described in the book "Was That Really Me?" It's a book that somehow manages to talk about functions on the human level instead of skirting around the real subject of it all.

And anyway, I can easily discuss the topic of acting out of character ("was that really me?") without reference to any functions. And I am suspicious of trying to reduce human behavior to a pattern because of the ad hoc nature of finding only those examples which fit the pattern.



I'm pretty sure I explained what those images are about? Didn't I say above they were about Jung's personal method of thinking? Because, I'll tell you, I get no sense of recognition from Psychological Types. But if I ever start hallucinating, I'll be sure to check it out again.

Yea the difference isnt about human vs robot level. Its just that that book of yours tries to explain this stuff on behavioristic level using real life examples of behavior motivated by function, while jung looks at this from the point of view of depth psychology.

Looks like you have hard time seeing the human aspect without examples of behavior, that doesent mean that its not there. For me jungs point of view seems way more human, than behavioristic models of typology, behaviorism is qhats missing the human aspect imo, since its just an reaction, which usually is pretty automatic and only looks at the whole thing from reductionistic point of view. I mean i could program a robot to do what the example at op did with Fe, thats because the example is missing what makes us human, the depth part of the psyche, which is what jung deals with.

And your idea of definition of the word image is false.

I wrote this on another forum on other subject, but you might get some idea of what the image means:

Yea i didnt meanpicture like visual images, but mental images, the sort of nonvisual images your consciousness perceives, when you see or hear something.For example when you hear someone screaming a certain way, you might get an image of someone being in urgent need of help. Without this image attached to the screaming(or everything else you perceive) the noice would be meaningless static, something thatnew born babies are experiencing.

What i think the consciousness is observing are this sort of images. Even the sounds you hear with your ears are these images, same with visual perceptions. Take the ames room illusion as an example, ifitwas the actual outside world youperceived,there wouldnt be any illusion, but because you are using an already existing image of a room in your perception, you see the people changing sizes,evenifyouknewthatits justan illusion.

Naturally the images are created by stimuli coming from the eyes,mixed with your already existing images and some of these images are so deeply rooted, like the image of a room, that its not altered by external world, instead the externalworld tries to fit itself to this image.

And if you dont know what ames room is:

 

[Mal12345]

Is there a difference between the Ames room illusion and the moon illusion? "The moon illusion is one of the most famous of all illusions. Stated simply, the full moon, when just above the horizon, appears much larger than when it is overhead. Yet the moon, a quarter of a million miles away from the earth, always subtends the same angle wherever it is in the sky, roughly 0.5 degrees."

 

[INTP]

Is there a difference between the Ames room illusion and the moon illusion? "The moon illusion is one of the most famous of all illusions. Stated simply, the full moon, when just above the horizon, appears much larger than when it is overhead. Yet the moon, a quarter of a million miles away from the earth, always subtends the same angle wherever it is in the sky, roughly 0.5 degrees."

I never heard of the moon illusion before and wikipedia says that there is debates on the causes and lists few possible explanations for it.

But why does it matter?

 

[Mal12345]

The moon illusion does not require any special rooms. All it requires is nature. You can see it every time you watch the moon rise and set.

I think one of the problems I have with the Quenk book is that I don't identify with the INTPs in the examples Quenk provides. Their methods are not my methods, for example, the INTP mother who only wants to focus on whatever is rational.

Part of the problem is that the people described that book are in some ways beneath me. They only think up a very few limited methods to apply to life challenges, and they believe those methods are the only tools available. And in the case of the 50-year-old INTP mother in another example, who feels she has emotionally neglected her family, she has merely repressed her "mommy" traits and is not expressing inferior Fe at all. We are both INTP but I can't see the similarity between us.

It can't ALL be reduced to functions. Believe me. Reductionism is a powerful intellectual tool, but it leaves out any content that does not agree with its formula. This is just as true of materialism/behaviorism as it is with Jungianism. Materialism cannot explain the spiritual side of life - it cannot even explain consciousness itself; but Jungianism cannot explain how the inferior function delivers its unconscious content to the tertiary without appealing to a materialistic explanation. (Jung had no concept of a tertiary function, by the way.)

 

[INTP]

I dont think i have ever seen moon rise or set. It usually is up already before it gets dark and cant really see the horizon because all the forest and buildings.

Well the example INTP there was pretty Fe retard, i mean i have figured out that the Fe approach in this sort of situations works long time ago, and im just turning 25.. someone being 50 and not having this figured out sounds more like an exception.

Anyways, you dont seem like an INTP at all to me.

Reductionism doesent have to leave out what doesent fit, if you do that, thats just lying to yourself and others, not scientific in any level.
For example jung reduced his system not to have neurological aspects in it, simply because there was so little info about it at the time, and even today, i doubt that he would find more answers from neurological point of view, anyways its not there and because its not there, his model is reductionistic, every model in the world is, because you cant include everything to everything. Nevertheless his ideas of archetypes, functions, ego, unconscious etc fit the neurological view also.

What comes to jung and third, yes jusg had the idea of third, third is quite essesntial part of his typology.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

I imagine Jung as a pyschologist in his practice in inpatient facilities, and I think about how he must have gotten so bored of seeing the same psychoses and neuroses every day, that his Ne couldn't help but notice patterns in how different people perceived and processed data, leading to his discovery of some of the fundamental working of our higher brains, and how it made us have different expressions while at the same time not necessarily being unique in the human context; how we all, being human, basically perceive or intuit, and feel or think, with either an extroverted or introverted persuasion.

His theory, while awesome, was just scratching the surface of our minds and what's makes us us. He preferred to delve into unconscious wanderings and lose himself in how our primitive brains tie into ancient wisdom and even metaphysical resonances. Thereby effectually ..... deflecting? any further mind explorations of how the psyche worked. But how much further could he have gone anyway? Science needs to contribute to our knowledge of how the brain works, and how the mind/body connection manifests, which makes our personality.

Jung discovered fundamental tools our minds use to help us be in our world. But, you are right, that does little to explain our emotions and why we feel and behave the way we do. I think that is why we have to explore further, and flesh out, Jung's work with perhaps Freud's ideas on the id, superego, and ego. I think these help explain what is missing in Jung's work regarding the mind.

That is also why I don't like to get into debates on function hierarchy past the first few preferred functions. And actually Jung seems to really just speak to two main functions in people as well in P.T. Because in the context of a human being's life and maturity, a juvenile human seems to definitely, given a controlled environment allowing for natural growth and expression, prefer one or two functions as they develop. One is how they prefer to perceive/intuit, and one is how they rationalize their world. Once they are matured, which is up for debate but somewhere between the ages of ?15-24?, I think function development becomes more heavily reliant on environmental factors than inherited traits, though they all work together, of course. If environment is constant as a human grows and matures, it will have less influence on the natural innate functions that manifest. As environment changes, as when a child leaves home around 18+, environment will play more of a role in function usage. If environment is always fluid and never reliable, then that might manifest as even the first two preferred functions being less set, resulting in a more fluid personality type; however, there IS an innate preference for personality that is heritable.

Jungian is perhaps nature, and we need to incorporate how nurture affects our personality.

I think enneagram and the instinctual stacking (especially) does a good job of bridging this gap of how our ego development affects our typology, making for a unique expression of how we are in our world as individuals; bringing in the 'human' component which you aptly describe is lacking in a strict Jungian view of personality. Am I a 4 sx/so/sp because I am melancholy and authentic due to my environmental influences? I think so, which is also, for me, why it feels more subject to change based on phases I've gone through in my life, where I've been more 2-ish, or 5-ish for example.

Typology shouldn't change because it IS our inherent personality that we given when we are conceived.



And, yes, I think the Ames room concept is similar to the Moon Illusion your referred to. And for fun, here is an optical illusion for you. Is the hill going up or down?

But no matter what you see, or feel, about it, the hill is, and always was, going down to meet the sea...


EDIT: lol. well, there is a spot on the hill where you don't believe what you see/feel, though you cannot see the illusion in that photo.