Can someone help me better understand the extroverted/introverted judging functions?

[ChrisC99]

Hi everyone!

I'm still struggling a bit to understand exactly the differences between extroverted and introverted judging functions, and wondered if anyone could help clear the concept up a bit for me? For example, feelings are feelings - viewing something in terms of its value and relevance for people and how they will feel about the way in which they're affected by it. But if someone cares about how they make others feel, that's still an inward concern...even though the application is outward. Or, if someone has inner feelings about changes that could make a better world for instance...the potential ramifications are still in the external world. So how is something classified as Fe versus Fi?

One way I've been told to think about it is in terms of how people 'align' themselves and their feelings and values with the world and people around them versus deriving them internally. But, does this mean Fe-users basically follow the crowd to do whatever everyone else believes, rather than deriving their own personal beliefs? I wouldn't think an Fe preference would be something that would preclude independent thought or standing for a cause that runs counter to the majority! Not with people like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela counted as ENFJS

Others have suggested thinking of Fe users as people who 'know' their audience - read other people's feelings and instinctively adapt their way of communicating to be responsive to them. But does that imply that Fi users would tend to be poor at reading or responding to how other people feel?

Myers-Briggs tests often differentiate judgers and perceivers based on their level of focus, of organization; Judgers, who extravert their dominant judging functions, tend to be on time, plan ahead, stay focused on one goal to completion, while Perceivers with their dominant judging functions introverted tend to be more scattered and spontaneous. But I don't see where that would have anything to do with the extroversion or introversion of the functions; why would someone who extroverts feeling be more likely to be focused and organized than someone who introverts it?

There's one last point that confuses me on the functions. It's indicated that if one judging function is preferentially extroverted, the other is preferentially introverted. Why would this always necessarily be the case? For example, isn't it possible for someone to have a preference for extroverting rather than introverting both, feeling AND thinking, even if one was dominant? Why would someone who extroverts a dominant feeling function necessarily prefer introverted to extroverted thinking?

Thank you so much for your thoughts!!

 

[typologyenthusiast]

Myers-Briggs tests often differentiate judgers and perceivers based on their level of focus, of organization; Judgers, who extravert their dominant judging functions, tend to be on time, plan ahead, stay focused on one goal to completion, while Perceivers with their dominant judging functions introverted tend to be more scattered and spontaneous.

My explanation about this is that MBTI explain how judgers and perceivers behave based on their research. The four letter that end with J likes to plan, they rarely don't plan and want to see that what happens happens as they have planned. They (the Fe) may get dissapointed when it turns out that their plan fails while XXXP may not felt so because they have never expected that in t the first place. The four letter that end with P prefer not to plan, go with the flow, keep their option open. They may not believe that plan will be achieved as it is planned in the first place. So they undergo theirlife spontaneusly. XXXP tend to just do it, and See what happens, etc rather than think ahead what will happen if I say this, I do this and that, which willl be more like XXXJ. A historical example that: Telling that when in Rome, act as Romans do is likely to be told by XXXP type. XXXJ will likely to "invade" even though they were in Rome, not in their homeland. When you read history, you'll notice that some explorer of the world that went their voyage from Europe to the America, and to part of Asia and some stayed for colonializing the locals; they were likely to be XXXJs.

But I don't see where that would have anything to do with the extroversion or introversion of the functions; why would someone who extroverts feeling be more likely to be focused and organized than someone who introverts it?

The extroversion and introversion of each psychological functions are explained in psychological sense, which is not observable, While four letter of MBTI that is composed of the combination of the functions are explained in more behaviorally observable and scientific sense. After combining each of the psychological functions following Jung guidance, Myers may have continue her research by observation, and give explanations based on her findings, instead of deriving logically from each characteristics of the functions that you may be interested in. I am inclined to say MBTI may not provide the answer to your question. If you insisted want to know it, you might have to conduct the research on your own.

 

[Eric B]

We should think of the functions as “yes/no” reactions, made by complexes, which are different senses of “I” within the psyche, starting with the “ego”, the center of consciousness.

For extraverted functions, it's basically the 'environment' (other people, situations, objects), that determine yes/no, and the subject (ego or other complex) adopts this reaction as his own.(So this will be how they derive their own beliefs).

For introverted functions, the subject determines ye/no, by filtering the objective data through his own 'blueprint' of things.

The ego will choose one dominant function and one dominant attitude. Another complex, whose agenda is to balance the ego, will choose one function of the opposite rationality (judgment or perception), and the opposite attitude. This will become the “auxiliary” function, and together those two will make up the type (and the other six function-attitudes will be picked up by six other complexes, based on this).

So all of our processes are technically “inward”, but it'm where we draw their responses from that hetermines i/e.

So Fi might be good at “reading” people. Where Fe will determine yes/no (in the case of F, “good/bad”) based directly on what the other person outwardly conveys to them, Fi will look at their state or situation, and then put themselves in their place, and say “if that were me, I'd feel this way (good/bad)”. They might be wrong compared to Fe, but then Fe could be wrong if the other person is not being truthful about his wants or feelings (or maybe even not fully conscious of them).

With perception, the data itself says yes/no, and we just react or pass it along (immediately=e; from a storehouse=i). With judgment, we actually determine yes/no “rationally” (again, either having our own standerd, or adopting from elsewhere).
So when judgment is externally derived, it will tend to be about external “order”, for the environment itsel is what's dictating “yes” or “no“ (right/wrong). When perception is extraverted, what it's doing with the environment is waiting for the it to determine, not right/wrong, but rather what “is” or “isn't”, to begin with. So it will tend to keep things “open.”

 

[Jaguar]

For extraverted functions, it's basically the 'environment' (other people, situations, objects), that determine yes/no, and the subject (ego or other complex) adopts this reaction as his own.(So this will be how they derive their own beliefs).

I'd be fucking bankrupt, were that true.

 

[Eric B]

Only if you had no introverted functions. This was talking about a function, not a whole type, (let alone a whole person!)

 

[Jaguar]

Only if you had no introverted functions. This was talking about a function, not a whole type, (let alone a whole person!)

Then start posting that, lest you create a slew of morons who think the sound of one violin is the same as the sound of an entire orchestra.

 

[GavinElster]

Myers-Briggs tests often differentiate judgers and perceivers based on their level of focus, of organization; Judgers, who extravert their dominant judging functions, tend to be on time, plan ahead, stay focused on one goal to completion, while Perceivers with their dominant judging functions introverted tend to be more scattered and spontaneous. But I don't see where that would have anything to do with the extroversion or introversion of the functions; why would someone who extroverts feeling be more likely to be focused and organized than someone who introverts it?

That part of the theory is something i'd take with a lot of skepticism. The idea of functions like feeling/thinking/sensation/intuition originates from Jung, who had no official connection with the Myers-Briggs enterprise, and it's safe to say he didn't think this at all. Nor does socionics, another typology based on Jung's ideas. This aspect of the theory is a highly opinionated, controversial stance.

I'd pretty much throw out the connection between the dichotomies (the test J/P, N/S, ...) and the functions beyond some basic heuristic associations.

I'd classify the Jungian functions as a highly philosophical system, where people have different senses of what the fundamental parts should mean. There are different theories of Fe, Fi, etc. I think a bunch of these have something insightful to say, but as with most philosophical issues, there isn't something I'd say of a full consensus on what model or approach is ideal.

I'm still struggling a bit to understand exactly the differences between extroverted and introverted judging functions, and wondered if anyone could help clear the concept up a bit for me? For example, feelings are feelings - viewing something in terms of its value and relevance for people and how they will feel about the way in which they're affected by it. But if someone cares about how they make others feel, that's still an inward concern...even though the application is outward. Or, if someone has inner feelings about changes that could make a better world for instance...the potential ramifications are still in the external world. So how is something classified as Fe versus Fi?

I don't think the characterization of 'how others feel vs how you feel' is terribly helpful, honestly.
For basically the reasons you give.

However, I do think there is a real idea being gotten at. I like to start with the perceiving functions (bear in mind my ideas are essentially my views, as I don't think there is much of an authority on these issues -- I try to read the main authors and then form my own sense), where it's easiest: to me, Se vs Si denotes the difference in emphasis -- on the one hand, a sensation is completely private and subjective -- how tomatoes taste to you cannot be directly perceived by another besides yourself, or at least, even if one doesn't accept that as a metaphysical thesis, psychologically, that's how it feels, and Jungian type is focusing on that psychology.

Se on the other hand has to do with the equally natural perspective on sensation that focuses on the fact that a sensation conveys the sense you are interacting with an external world in some way. It's hard to touch a tomato and not get the sense you are interacting with a world outside you, even if the experience of touch is something internal to you.


Introverted judgment/extraverted is indeed kind of tricky, but the idea is still 'is the judgment determined by internal factors' -- one way of taking that might be that the contents of the judgment would seem to be the same whether there were a world outside yourself or not.

The theoretical basis of this definition Jung employed was the idea of 'archetypes,' which is to say certain primal images deep in the mind that he thinks form the basis of introverted functions.

Of course, he saw it as impractical to totally divorce one from the external world or internal, so he always thought of it as the degree to which you were influenced by one or the other.

There's one last point that confuses me on the functions. It's indicated that if one judging function is preferentially extroverted, the other is preferentially introverted. Why would this always necessarily be the case? For example, isn't it possible for someone to have a preference for extroverting rather than introverting both, feeling AND thinking, even if one was dominant? Why would someone who extroverts a dominant feeling function necessarily prefer introverted to extroverted thinking?

That isn't something from Jung's work, so again, it's a controversial point not accepted by every theorist, so you're right to question it (and should arrive at your own conclusion).

Jung was relatively unclear a writer, but he definitely typed Nietzsche as having both introverted intuition and introverted thinking as his top two....he just also said some things that make me doubt how consistent he is in his view on how many functions are 'conscious'... so I prefer to say Jung thought you can have NiTi in practice as top two than that nothing in his theory seems inconsistent with that.... In his approach in Psychological Types, you typed people's functions separately and attitude separately, and to have 'introverted intuition' is just to be an introvert with a developed intuition.

From Chapter III of Psychological Types

The fact that it is just the psychological functions of intuition on the one hand, and of sensation and instinct on the other, that Nietzsche brings into relief, must be characteristic of his own personal psychology. He must surely be reckoned as an intuitive type with an inclination towards the side of introversion. As evidence of the former we have his pre-eminently intuitive, artistic manner of production, of which this very work The Birth of Tragedy is highly characteristic, while his master work Thus Spake Zarathustra is even more so. His aphoristic writings are expressive of his introverted intellectual side. These, in spite of a strong admixture of feeling, exhibit a pronounced critical intellectualism in the manner of the French intellectuals of the eighteenth century

combined with

Just as Darwin might possibly represent the normal extraverted thinking type, so we might point to Kant as a counterexample of the normal introverted thinking type. The former speaks with facts; the latter appeals to the subjective factor. Darwin ranges over the wide fields of objective facts, while Kant restricts himself to a critique of knowledge in general. But suppose a Cuvier be contrasted with a Nietzsche: the antithesis becomes even sharper.

from Ch. X of Psychological Types.
For the uninitiated, Jung is prone to referring to the thinking function and its activity as 'the intellect' and as 'intellectual' activity. For example, in Ch. X, in discussing how knowledge of the auxiliary function is important in treating patients,

his peculiarity, however, is of interest only for one who is concerned with the practical psychological treatment of such cases. But for such a man it is important to know about it. For I have frequently observed the way in which a physician, in the case for instance of an exclusively intellectual subject, will do his utmost to develop the feeling function directly out of the unconscious.

it is clear he is talking of an 'intellectual subject' as someone with a conscious thinking function and unconscious feeling function. So when nietzsche's 'introverted intellectual' side is revealed in aphoristic writings, Jung means Nietzsche's Ti.

The point I like to mention about the controversy surrounding whether the auxiliary can be conscious, however, is that these two lines are, strictly speaking, in contradiction.

he products of all the functions can be conscious, but we speak of the consciousness of a function only when not merely its application is at the disposal of the will, but when at the same time its principle is decisive for the orientation of consciousness. The latter event is true when, for instance, thinking is not a mere esprit de l'escalier, or rumination, but when its decisions possess an absolute validity, so that the logical conclusion in a given case holds good, whether as motive or as guarantee of practical action, without the backing of any further evidence. This absolute sovereignty always belongs, empirically, to one function alone, and can belong only to one function,

So only one function can be conscious. But here

A grouping of the unconscious functions also takes place in accordance with the relationship of the conscious functions. Thus, for instance, an unconscious intuitive feeling attitude may correspond with a conscious practical intellect, whereby the function of feeling suffers a relatively stronger inhibition than intuition.

he is somewhat lazily prone to saying the dom and aux can both be conscious. Which is in direct correspondence with his willingness to type Nietzsche as both an introverted thinking type and an introverted intuitive (in Ch. X and Ch. III respectively) -- all he means is that, in practice, he's often willing to say someone is an introverted thinking type if they have secondary, not even primary, introverted thinking.



The lesson I want people to take away from this stuff is not to believe Jung or any other theorist, but to realize how controversial these issues are and discuss critically the right interpretation of typology. Too often, you get an attitude that takes confusions of the uninitiated and just responds with 'If you understood typology better, you'd know you can't have that function stack" -- but clearly, this is an unreasonable allegation, as people who are the experts on the subject had different views. Which means hard work needs to be done to sort out the views/find the right one.