Jung on Ni-doms: "y'all a bunch of crazies."

[Paladin-X]

How controversial is this typing of Jung, do you know? Meaning, who identified his tert as Ni and is this widely accepted or not? I'm not challenging you, just curious. Associating his Ni development with his break from Freud is interesting. And that example seems very much like Ni to me, the communication of information in metaphorical moving image.

As a natural scientist, thinking and sensation were uppermost in me and intuition and feeling were in the unconscious and contaminated by the collective unconscious. You cannot get directly to the inferior function from the superior, it must always be via the auxiliary function. It is as though the unconscious were in such antagonism to the superior function that it allowed no direct attack. The process of working through the auxiliary functions goes on somewhat as follows: Suppose you have sensation strongly developed but are not fanatical about it. Then you can admit about every situation a certain aura of possibilities; that is to say, you permit an intuitive element to come in. Sensation as an auxiliary function would allow intuition to exist. But inasmuch as sensation (in the example) is a partisan of the intellect, intuition sides with the feeling, here the inferior function. Therefore the intellect will not agree with intuition, in this case, and will vote for its exclusion. Intellect will not hold together sensation and intuition, rather it will separate them. Such a destructive attempt will be checked by feeling, which backs up intuition.

Introduction to Jungian Psychology, Notes of the Seminar on Analytical Psychology Given in 1925 -- C.G. Jung -- Pg 75-76

But as [MENTION=18736]reckful[/MENTION] points out in his link, Jung, in a 1950s interview, identifies with Intuition over Sensation.

 

[Werebudgie]

more realistically, i understand that metaphysics is not easy to convey, and i think a self-conscious, metaphysical perspective is necessary to situate any discussion of cognitive functions. i think typology itself, broader than personality, is an art of metaphysics.

Do you think typology overall is an art of metaphysics, or is the Ni meta-perspective approach shaping how you experience and approach it? (a real/not rhetorical question).

i can't really capture the moving pictures and the holograms that start to come into shape apart from evoking bits and pieces here and there and trying to keep some of the smoke trails, before the thing disappears.

Yeah, I have that experience too. Or something enough like it that I would say that.

it's clear that i have a tangled, mass of unarticulated assumptions. if you'd like to have a conversation about them, i can try and would enjoy doing so. but you're right, even i'm self-conscious about spewing too much metaphysics all over this thread.

For such a conversation: Do you think starting another thread would be a good place, or PM, or something else, or not at all....?

i see it as the process of bridging uncommon denominators. fractalization is required to stabilize conditions for recognizing meaningful difference more clearly, even if in so doing, we are held accountable to the fact that perspective is bound by time. it's the power of symmetry to provide an axis of quasi-absolute direction in the mind.

I'm getting fragments here. Don't know if my response is relevant to what you're saying, but:

1. When I wrote what you responded to, I was thinking of a concept of fractal cultural transmission that I'd seen some years ago. So it's interesting that you mention fractalization.

2. From my own Ni perception, time is just another coordinate of where something/someone/some situation is located. Movement from one vantage point to another can at times include time as one of the coordinates. I wonder if that does or doesn't connect to what you wrote.

there's a book about "conceptual blending" that really goes into what i think you're saying. in cognitive psychology, i ran into the term "feature extraction." to set up a comparison/contrast between things operating at different logical types and to recognize the conditions of possibility that connect them, those metaphysical patterns we are describing, i think is how it works. it's analogical reasoning, or what is called abductive inference. it's a way of guessing what could be termed initial conditions but for our process are more like cosmological ones.

I'm not following you here, but then if I understand correctly (do I?), you're trying to use external concepts/language to map to something you know/experience but may have no easy words for, and especially no easy shared words between us. Is that at all accurate? I often look for external conceptual anchors that can possibly communicate things that I otherwise find difficult to put into words. But those anchors aren't central for me .... they're just a tool that I hold very lightly to help with a certain kind of conscious understanding and communication. Does that make any sense to you?

our national flag can be an example from the mandelbrot set, alongside which we can rename ourselves, "the cognitive function formerly known as Ni."

I don't get the mandelbrot/flag reference but "the cognitive function formerly known as Ni" is really catchy! Do we get a symbol too?

 

[Werebudgie]

Okay, so if I'm getting this, the answer to "is it widely accepted that Jung was Ni-tert?" is no and no one really knows what MBTI type he'd have been or even what his dominant cognitive function was, but people do try to figure it out in various ways and have come to various conclusions. Am I understanding this correctly?

 

[reckful]

^ Yes, you are understanding this correctly.

 

[Stanton Moore]

Ni doesn't exist. Sorry.
But continue with your attempt at self awareness. eventually you'll outgrow self obsession, and typology will fall away naturally.

 

[TaylorS]

How controversial is this typing of Jung, do you know? Meaning, who identified his tert as Ni and is this widely accepted or not? I'm not challenging you, just curious. Associating his Ni development with his break from Freud is interesting. And that example seems very much like Ni to me, the communication of information in metaphorical moving image.

He was definitely a Ti-Dom. In Psychological Types he mentions that he originally mistakenly equated Thinking with Introversion and Feeling with Extraversion because he was an Introverted Thinking type.

He gave mixed messages about his auxiliary. During a set of lectures he gave in the 1920s he said that he said that Thinking and Sensation were "foremost within him", though during an interview in his later years he said Thinking and Intuition were his strongest functions. My problem with him being an INTP is exactly that mid-life crisis, it just screams unconscious Ni. Also, throughout his career he had a habit of emphasizing the strictly empirical basis of his ideas via his clinical practice. In contrast to an INTP scientist like Einstein, who theorized based on a few bits of evidence, an ISTP scientist like Jung tends to get a bunch of data first and then theorize based on that data.

 

[PeaceBaby]

You cannot get directly to the inferior function from the superior, it must always be via the auxiliary function.

Hmm, indeed, interesting. Yes, I have felt that it's through aux Ne that my Te is most engaged. Ne spins out a bunch of possibilities, Te sorts through them with efficiency to what promises utility. It's the Fi that weighs objection or validation, that does the sifting. And I would say, Fi starts the chain through a feeling-tone response, a gut feeling, a "something has to be done about this" sense. The Fi is not "the rubber that meets the road" function, but it is one that helps get the wheels rolling. Some problem will gain my attention and it's this ability to problem-solve on the fly that results. Otherwise, Te lies dormant and asleep.

---

There are quite a few threads here that have explored Jung's possible type. The best arguments favor INTx. When I watch videos of him, I lean more to INTP. He does not feel like an Ni dom.

 

[TaylorS]

Okay, so if I'm getting this, the answer to "is it widely accepted that Jung was Ni-tert?" is no and no one really knows what MBTI type he'd have been or even what his dominant cognitive function was, but people do try to figure it out in various ways and have come to various conclusions. Am I understanding this correctly?

Jung mentions early on in Psychological Types that he was a Ti-Dom and says that is why he originally wrongly assumed that all introverts were T and all extraverts were F. So he was either an INTP or an ISTP.

 

[Werebudgie]

Ni doesn't exist. Sorry.
But continue with your attempt at self awareness. eventually you'll outgrow self obsession, and typology will fall away naturally.

Shhhhh! We're trying to keep an air of mystique here and you're ruining it!

 

[Thalassa]

Si doms are crazies too. They can become insane believing that the internal sense impression is more real than the object, and can be pushed around until they snap in their world of aesthetic arrangements where the too high is brought lower and the too low higher. This is why an SJ of an unknown capacity can have hilarious or bizarre standards they insist are correct which make no logical sense. I mean they think the symbol is actually the thing.

Si doms and Ni doms are both delightful creatures in their mystifying individual perceptions of things. The Ni dom the voice crying in the wilderness and the Si dom the astute artist.

Anyway all perceiving dominants are irrational.

 

[Odi et Amo]

Jung always seemed like an Ni-dom to me. Quotes like these -
"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."
"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order."
"All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination."
"It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves."
"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate."
"We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth."
"Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious."
"Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable."

 

[Thalassa]

I agree he definitely had Ni either in dom or tertiary. The crux of his work seemed to be in identifying the underlying pattern of symbols in outwardly different cultures, and he was assuredly an introvert.

 

[simulatedworld]

^Yep, he described himself in a way that would, under current JCF labels, be called ISTP. (Tertiary Ni is right.) He was unequivocally Ti dom though; he said this about himself over and over and over.

Which is why it's so funny to point out to elitist N-supremacist douchebags that the guy who came up with all this stuff was a dreaded "Sensor"!

Good to be back, btw.

 

[Werebudgie]

Jung always seemed like an Ni-dom to me. Quotes like these -

Just for fun, my take on these quotes as related to Ni:

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."

Maybe

"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."

More likely, but could also be sourced in something unrelated to cognitive processes.

"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order."

That seems like it could be Ni to me.

"All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination."

Not Ni, IMO. But see also the comments on the final quote.

"It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves."

Possibly but possibly not. Depends on the context and what he actually meant with those words.

"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate."

Seems like a generic psychological type of comment, not obviously linked to Ni.

"We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth."

Congruent with Ni, but could come from anywhere - the context, would be important here. (also, what did he say were the other parts of the truth? That would be part but not all of the context)

"Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious."

Maybe, but could also be more generic from his specific context as a psychologist and what that meant.

"Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable."

I really don't associate Ni with imagination/fantasy, though in a cultural system where that layer of reality is (incorrectly IMO) considered unreal, it could happen. Assuming, of course, that these words refer to that which is not real. He may have meant something else by those words that may make it more Ni-ish.

Anyway, this is just me playing/thinking out loud.

 

[PeaceBaby]

^Yep, he described himself in a way that would, under current JCF labels, be called ISTP. (Tertiary Ni is right.) He was unequivocally Ti dom though; he said this about himself over and over and over.

Which is why it's so funny to point out to elitist N-supremacist douchebags that the guy who came up with all this stuff was a dreaded "Sensor"!

Good to be back, btw.

I can align with this too. There are times when you watch him on film, where he does give me that Ni feeling ... but then it vanishes. Ti really predominates. I would guess IxTP over Ni dominant.

 

[Jaguar]

Jung always seemed like an Ni-dom to me.

"Unfortunately I take little stock of new theories, as my empirical temperament is more eager for new facts than for what one might speculate about them, although this is, I must admit, an enjoyable intellectual pastime."

— Carl Jung

"It cannot be overemphasized that Jung is above all an empiricist."

— Jalonde Jacobi

 

[Zarathustra]

Good to be back, btw.

Good to have you back, man.

Now, let's keep it that way.

p.s. I win.

 

[RaptorWizard]

There's no Way at the bottom of Earth that Jung was a sensor. The ISTP Ti-Ni loop theory (for Jung's type) is like navigating the poop being excreted from the butt of a Snorlax, because his jelly-roles are for big-boys, not the tiny donuts as outlined by sensors.

There's plenty of people who are Ns very much in touch with physical Existence. For reference, I see Stephen Hawking as an INTJ, and his Worldview is extremely mechanical. Jung was actually an INFJ most likely, since he was very connected to the metaphysical ends of the World (this can apply to an INxx type of course, though INxJ in particular). I'm calling him a feeler, as an INTJ it seems would be more focused on building, whereas he tries to find the center of things.

Ultimately, INFJs and INTJs can play the role of "Prophet", but the NF Prophet is more of a seer, and the NT is more of a wizard. A seer gets a psychic grasp of how harmonies radiate, and a wizard Creates outlines that brings Worlds into Vision.

 

[yeghor]

Ultimately, INFJs and INTJs can play the role of "Prophet", but the NF Prophet is more of a seer, and the NT is more of a wizard. A seer gets a psychic grasp of how harmonies radiate, and a wizard Creates outlines that brings Worlds into Vision.[/FONT][/SIZE]

I've always imagined INFJs as clerics and INTJs as mages...one deals with the metaphysical\spiritual, and the other with physical\material...

Don't know enough about Jung though... but based on what I've been reading about his work on anima\animus and shadow etc., I guess his deductions would require a troubled persona and a strong Ni introspection to gaze on different fragments of self...

He reminds of an ISTJ here though...

 

[TaylorS]

^Yep, he described himself in a way that would, under current JCF labels, be called ISTP. (Tertiary Ni is right.) He was unequivocally Ti dom though; he said this about himself over and over and over.

Which is why it's so funny to point out to elitist N-supremacist douchebags that the guy who came up with all this stuff was a dreaded "Sensor"!

Good to be back, btw.

I blame Myers wrongly equating N with intellectualism for this BS, there are plently of S intellectuals. Jung typed both Darwin and Aristotle as ESTJs. The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume was almost certainly an ESFP. On the flip side, I have a new co-worker who is almost certainly an INFJ and she is not at all intellectual.