Eric B said:
Beebe in his new book (Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type, Chapter 11, on Jung’s “Red Bookâ€) says Jung was in fact an INTJ, but one whose “thinking was never his true superior function. Rather, his using it as if it were a superior function was a ‘falsification of type’, a not uncommon consequence of ‘abnormal external influences'†(p171).
I think the challenge is that when it comes to really specific type comparisons, like
which intuitive/thinking type was Jung (TiN, NiT), we run into the fact that Beebe and Jung are working by different precise systems. The MBTI's conception of the 8 function-attitudes by no means is identical to Jung's, despite common origins, and further of course is the issue that Jung seemed more OK with typings like NiTi than with typings like NiTe -- so the very frameworks differ.
So I'm personally
very skeptical of Beebe-ans' claims that Jung mistyped himself, and prefer the idea that they're simply working based on a revised system.
This doesn't mean I don't think we can strive for a single objectively best system (I personally think the idea of just treating socionics, Jung, MBTI as totally random different systems is absurd), just that it's likely we need to acknowledge the various clashes and find the ideal improvement in each case/get the best overall interpretation of "the" 16 types.
A simple instance where there's a difference between most Myers-Briggs frameworks and Jung's is what "counted" as falling under the thinking function. Things that spilled over into an intellectual domain already seemed to Jung to spill over into the thinking function, in part because he was content to leave some wilder speculative and/or heavily unconsciously perceived phenomena to what he called intuition. Whereas we, having "grown up with" the MBTI's concept of N/S have a view of N as much more compatible with intellectualizing -- maybe we say T is less unconscious, more technical, more explicit, and so on, which is the same in spirit, without relegating N-dominance as being mainly typical of stock-speculators, mystics, and so on.
On balance, here, I prefer the modern formulations (while remaining Jung-purist in other areas), because Jung's seem to apply better to the context of contrasting truly mystical "irrational" approaches with his more rational approaches (probably where he got the idea that he's too rationalistic). But I think most of us would find that, for the broadest explanatory power, the line between rational and intuitive should be drawn elsewhere.
So in short, I'd agree Jung's probably a N-dominant in modern frameworks, ones of the type Beebe is probably thinking of. I'm open to the idea that he can be modeled as a NiTe type -- here I'm not too sure, though. In other words, I'm not sold against the possibility of his being a NiF type.
His diagnosis of self as a TiS type might have something to do with a determination to present himself as a scientist.