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Interpret this Jung quote

Eric B

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I'd say Jung's model for a Ti-dom with an N aux is best viewed as either Ti-Ni-Se-Fe or Ti-N-Se-Fe. And the best argument for leaving out the attitude for the auxiliary is that Jung thought the auxiliary, because it "served" the dominant function, wasn't "autonomous" or "true to its own principle" to the same extent as when it was the dominant function.

The only two things I want to add at this point are:

1. To maybe clarify, when I talk about what I think Jung's view of the functions was, I'm not saying that's my view. I don't really view MBTI type from a functions perspective at all.

2. As for "the people whose types seem to fit a dominant with an opposite attitude auxiliary," I'd say it's important to keep in mind that the cognitive functions descriptions you find in modern theorists like Thomson, Berens and Nardi are different — sometimes in substantial respects — from Jung's descriptions, and in most cases the revised versions of the functions are substantially jerry-rigged to match the MBTI types to which (under Myers' model) they purportedly correspond. If what you're talking about is Jung's function descriptions, they very often don't fit. For example, Jung's Fe description emphasizes that Fe tends to adopt the community values of the person's time and place, and it's emphatically non-Jungian to expect that to apply to any introvert — including an I_FJ who purportedly has Fe as their auxiliary function — since Jung said it was characteristic of all the extraverted types to adopt majority values and characteristic of all introverted types to tend to shun majority values. As Jung explained (describing extraverts and introverts generally):

[W]e shall come upon individuals who in all their judgments, perceptions, feelings, affects, and actions feel external factors to be the predominant motivating force, or who at least give weight to them no matter whether causal or final motives are in question. I will give some examples of what I mean. St. Augustine: "I would not believe the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not compel it." ... One man finds a piece of modern music beautiful because everybody else pretends it is beautiful. Another marries in order to please his parents but very much against his own interests. ... There are not a few who in everything they do or don't do have but one motive in mind: what will others think of them? "One need not be ashamed of a thing if nobody knows about it."

[The previous examples] point to a psychological peculiarity that can be sharply distinguished from another attitude which, by contrast, is motivated chiefly by internal or subjective factors. A person of this type might say: "I know I could give my father the greatest pleasure if I did so and so, but I don't happen to think that way." ... There are some who feel happy only when they are quite sure nobody knows about it, and to them a thing is disagreeable just because it is pleasing to everyone else. They seek the good where no one would think of finding it. ... Such a person would have replied to St. Augustine: "I would believe the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not compel it." Always he has to prove that everything he does rests on his own decisions and convictions, and never because he is influenced by anyone, or desires to please or conciliate some person or opinion.​

So all extraverts would extravert Feeling? Including extraverted Thinkers? (Are you sure those quotes aren't using "values" as an example, and not specifying Feeling?)
 

Mal12345

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I don't understand your first point but, in his Differentiation definition, Jung says: "So long as a function is still so fused with one or more other functions—thinking with feeling, feeling with sensation, etc.—that it is unable to operate on its own, it is in an archaic (q.v.) condition, i.e., not differentiated." So I don't think my reference to "fused" unconscious functions was in need of a "correction."

Aw, come on! Can't I even be right ONE TIME???

"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." (539) Not - "fused together (as Jung put it)" with the other functions, but with its own parts.


Jung says the auxiliary needs to be complementary to the dominant as far as judging/perceiving goes. He doesn't address the extraverted/introverted issue.

Where does Jung say that Ti has a "complementary relationship" to Te? Marie Louise von Franz (one of his pupils) certainly didn't understand that to be his view. As she explained:

"Jung has said that the hardest thing to understand is not your opposite type — if you have introverted feeling it is very difficult to understand an extraverted thinking type — but the same functional type with the other attitude! It would be most difficult for an introverted feeling type to understand an extraverted feeling type. There one feels that one does not know how the wheels go round in that person's head."​

"There is also, however and now I come to the question of the introverted intellect an entirely different kind of thinking, to which the term 'thinking' can hardly be denied...I do not wish to enter more fully into this kind of thinking here; I have merely established its existence for the purpose of giving a necessary complement to the extraverted thinking process, whose nature is thus brought to a clearer focus."
(430-1)
 

reckful

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So all extraverts would extravert Feeling? Including extraverted Thinkers? (Are you sure those quotes aren't using "values" as an example, and not specifying Feeling?)

First, I'm not inclined to interpret those paragraphs as specifically focused on the feeling function, so it sounds like you and I are in agreement about that. My point was that the majority-values aspect of Jung's Fe-dom description was something he attributed to extraverts generally — with introverts having the opposite inclination — which means that, even if you think it's reasonable to argue that Jung thought an Ni-dom with an F-aux would have an Fe-aux (which I don't), it doesn't make sense to say that the "Fe" that the Ni-Fe would exhibit would include the majority-values orientation that you'll find in his Fe description.

And Jung clearly thought that the unconscious side of an extravert (for example) was introverted, so when he says that extraverts are "individuals who in all their judgments, perceptions, feelings, affects, and actions feel external factors to be the predominant motivating force," he's clearly talking about the extraverts' conscious side, not their unconscious functions. In other words, to specifically answer your first question, Jung clearly didn't think a Te-dom's feeling function would be Fe.

Again, though, the two paragraphs I quoted are talking about all extraverts and all introverts, not Fe-doms and Fi-doms. There's no question Jung thought Te-doms tended to adopt majority values — as a result of their extraversion, and despite the fact that their F function was (unconscious) Fi — and that's clear from his Te-dom description as well as from the paragraph (about all extraverts) that I quoted.
 

reckful

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Aw, come on! Can't I even be right ONE TIME???

"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." (539) Not - "fused together (as Jung put it)" with the other functions, but with its own parts.

No, Mal+, I'm sorry. You are not allowed to be right even ONE TIME.

Are you seriously trying to say you think there's a meaningful distinction between two things being "fused" and two things being "fused together"? Well, FYI, in Chapter 2 of our favorite book, Jung notes that, for Schiller (a Ti-dom), feeling and sensation are "fused together on account of their undeveloped state." So neener neener.

"There is also, however and now I come to the question of the introverted intellect an entirely different kind of thinking, to which the term 'thinking' can hardly be denied...I do not wish to enter more fully into this kind of thinking here; I have merely established its existence for the purpose of giving a necessary complement to the extraverted thinking process, whose nature is thus brought to a clearer focus." (430-1)

Um, yep, he uses the word "complement" all right, but that's a word with multiple meanings, and in that context it doesn't mean "complement" in the way that you want it to mean. Jung clearly didn't think introverted thinking could serve as the auxiliary function for a Te-dom, and that was partly because, as von Franz explained, Jung thought Ti was the function that was the most opposite to Te — despite being a "necessary complement" in terms of the total psychic economy.

Jung thought people needed all four functions to some degree, and that a T-dom needed balance from F from their unconscious. And so, using "complement" in the way Jung does in the sentence you just quoted (about Te and Ti), Jung could just as well have said that unconscious Fi was a "necessary complement" to the extraverted thinking process — but that doesn't mean it could be a Te-dom's auxiliary function.
 

Eric B

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First, I'm not inclined to interpret those paragraphs as specifically focused on the feeling function, so it sounds like you and I are in agreement about that. My point was that the majority-values aspect of Jung's Fe-dom description was something he attributed to extraverts generally — with introverts having the opposite inclination — which means that, even if you think it's reasonable to argue that Jung thought an Ni-dom with an F-aux would have an Fe-aux (which I don't), it doesn't make sense to say that the "Fe" that the Ni-Fe would exhibit would include the majority-values orientation that you'll find in his Fe description.

And Jung clearly thought that the unconscious side of an extravert (for example) was introverted, so when he says that extraverts are "individuals who in all their judgments, perceptions, feelings, affects, and actions feel external factors to be the predominant motivating force," he's clearly talking about the extraverts' conscious side, not their unconscious functions. In other words, to specifically answer your first question, Jung clearly didn't think a Te-dom's feeling function would be Fe.

Again, though, the two paragraphs I quoted are talking about all extraverts and all introverts, not Fe-doms and Fi-doms. There's no question Jung thought Te-doms tended to adopt majority values — as a result of their extraversion, and despite the fact that their F function was (unconscious) Fi — and that's clear from his Te-dom description as well as from the paragraph (about all extraverts) that I quoted.
Well, then, that's probably talking about social behavior, which is more along the lines of classic temperament theory, which is most closely represented by the Interaction Styles. Part of my trying to refine function definitions is separating out behaviors assumed to be function "use" from what the functions really are.
So yes, all extraverts may appear to "adopt the community values", as part of their merging of the subject with the object (or their trying to fill their understimulation from the outside). But it's not necessarily extraverted Feeling. Or at the most, it can be seen as an undifferentiated version of it (not separated from other functions or from limbic response).
 

reckful

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Well, then, that's probably talking about social behavior, which is more along the lines of classic temperament theory, which is most closely represented by the Interaction Styles. Part of my trying to refine function definitions is separating out behaviors assumed to be function "use" from what the functions really are.
So yes, all extraverts may appear to "adopt the community values", as part of their merging of the subject with the object (or their trying to fill their understimulation from the outside). But it's not necessarily extraverted Feeling. Or at the most, it can be seen as an undifferentiated version of it (not separated from other functions or from limbic response).

Well, Jung didn't subscribe to Interaction Styles as far as I know. :D

As you probably know, Jung spent more of Psychological Types describing the stuff all extraverts and all introverts had in common than he spent describing all eight of the functions put together, and much of it was pretty deep-down values/attitudes/worldview stuff (not to mention the deeper-down psychodynamic stuff). I wouldn't say those two paragraphs I quoted are limited to the "social behavior" level. As Jung says, he's talking about "all their judgments, perceptions, feelings, affects, and actions."
 

Mal12345

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No, Mal+, I'm sorry. You are not allowed to be right even ONE TIME.

Are you seriously trying to say you think there's a meaningful distinction between two things being "fused" and two things being "fused together"? Well, FYI, in Chapter 2 of our favorite book, Jung notes that, for Schiller (a Ti-dom), feeling and sensation are "fused together on account of their undeveloped state." So neener neener.

Ok, so "fused together" and "merged" are synonymous (I wasn't pointing to any ridiculous distinction between "fused" and "fused together").


Um, yep, he uses the word "complement" all right, but that's a word with multiple meanings, and in that context it doesn't mean "complement" in the way that you want it to mean. Jung clearly didn't think introverted thinking could serve as the auxiliary function for a Te-dom, and that was partly because, as von Franz explained, Jung thought Ti was the function that was the most opposite to Te — despite being a "necessary complement" in terms of the total psychic economy.

Jung thought people needed all four functions to some degree, and that a T-dom needed balance from F from their unconscious. And so, using "complement" in the way Jung does in the sentence you just quoted (about Te and Ti), Jung could just as well have said that unconscious Fi was a "necessary complement" to the extraverted thinking process — but that doesn't mean it could be a Te-dom's auxiliary function.

To "complement" means to complete; Jung is only trying to piece together the whole psyche in terms that are opposites. Opposites complement and support one another (for example, the idea that evil cannot exist without good, and vice versa).

Ti is not Te's auxiliary function, we all know this. Yet the auxiliary function is complementary to the dominant function, not only in terms of attitude; Jung is quite strong in his belief that F can never be auxiliary to T, and vice versa, and that only an irrational function can complement a dominant rational function. Jung is systematizing the human psyche, not merely describing it.
 

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But it seems that in Jung's view (as can be seen here), only the dominant is completely "differentiated". The aux. was never as "type"-defining as MBTI made it out to be. (Hence, he only had eight types).

i dont think he saw dom as completely differentiated, just most differentiated. what comes to jung not seeing aux as type defining(tho many jungian analysts who worked with jung and learned directly from him have mentioned their aux when telling their type, for example introverted sensing type with thinking or extraverted intuitive with feeling), i think it was largely that he mostly dealt with people with some issues and they were probably not using their aux as efficiently as a normal healthy person would, also it might be possible that at his times people werent developing so diversely because of less diverse stimulation than we have today.
 
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