reckful said:
During that 1925 seminar, he seems to be referring to the ST period of life as a past phase, when he was a "natural scientist," and so "thinking and sensation were uppermost in me" ("were" in the past tense).
It doesn't really make sense to me that in 1925, when he was traveling and giving lectures on his typology, he would have viewed 1921 (when he published Psychological Types) as some now-concluded "natural scientist" phase of his life. I'd think his med school years and practicing psychiatrist/doctor years would be the likelier candidate for what he meant by his "natural scientist" years.
Well, we know what period he was referring to, qualitatively, if not quantitatively -- we just don't know what exact date that is; Jung was, in his "As a natural scientist" quote, referring to the period asked about just lines before, where he was bringing up the inferior function, presumably a period discussed in the seminar earlier, given the fact this was a question asked by a seminar participant, presumably.
I'm not sure I make of the past tense that it was a
far away, now-long-gone period -- much of the seminar (including the portions I see as possibly the part of his life asked about by the woman) seems to deal with periods that were relevant to his work on either psychology of the unconscious or psychology of types. Not things belonging to some distant period before he really affiliated with psychological issues. So I'd far from dismiss that this was just a recent past event he learned from, unless there's compelling reason.
So, while in my long list of possible interpretations, I did grant you that Jung may have been talking of a phase when he was into more "traditional" medicine, honestly I'm not inclined to think he was talking about such a time -- it would be very weird if he were trying to delve into his inferior function/unconscious at such a time, and such a time is what the woman who asked him the question referred to. It seems like he'd HAVE to have moved on to psychiatry/psychology/whatever by that time.
And yes, those were first and foremost descriptions of Si in an Si-dom, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't have felt that he related reasonably well. (Don't forget that he thought Ti-aux Nietzsche made for a "sharp" example of introverted thinking.)
For all practical purposes, Jung seems to refer to the
conscious functions in the plural, and so I'd say basically that if his top two were thinking+sensation, he would have felt he related quite well to the introverted sensation type portrait, in the same sense as he felt Nietzsche should have corresponded to the introverted thinking type portrait well.
I sympathize with your incredulity in a sense, because after all, Jung changed his mind later on, and I'm inclined to think he was thinking more clearly later on, but we have to remember Jung had quite a complex about being seen as a traditional scientist, one who observes reality carefully, not some wild mystic. He even declared people who called him a mystic, reportedly, to be idiots. So it really wouldn't surprise me that he'd have rationalized (however strangely) into believing that he's a TS type.
In fact, Jung probably would view his data on the collective unconscious being evident in his patients as legitimate empirical data -- even if you or I would scoff at this definition of "empirical." Basically, ESPECIALLY because Jung's concept of introversion includes a huge meat of what we'd call "N" today, it really wouldn't surprise me if he thought he's a thinking>sensation>intuition>feeling type at Psychological Types' time of writing...even if he eventually decided he's too crazy to legitimately have a good relation with reality/thus had intuition>sensation.
Basically I'm not saying Jung DOES resemble a sensation type so much as he was probably telling himself that -- just because you or I would view him as a mystic/prophet doesn't mean Jung saw himself as that (in fact, I'd if anything say that he DID NOT see himself that way until maybe later), at least in the earlier days when he kept the illusion of being closer to a traditional scientist. Or even if not probably, at least it's a very legitimate possibility, but personally I'm leaning probably.
This odd mix of performing scientific analysis of empirical data (T+S) AND being in touch with the collective unconscious (introversion) would probably be the exact mix someone who has rationalized that he is doing real science but is still coming up with theories like the collective unconscious would think he exhibits.
It's also pretty hard for me to believe that Jung would have thought that his strange "Si" descriptions had much to do with him.
Also, just in general on this point, I think one has to get used to the fact that Jung, on many occasions, just refers to the top two functions without treating them as "function-attitudes"; I would give more weight to what Jung thought a typical TS type is (scientist) vs TN type (speculative intellect) than I would to what Jung thought introverted sensation types are like.
That is, while it is TRUE that Jung probably would pick TiSi (if he were a thinking+sensation type with introversion) over, say, TiSe, I'm less inclined to worry about whether he fit the Si portrait in his eyes than to worry if he fit both thinking+sensation separately and introversion separately -- since that is how he seemed to think of type. And it seems to me pretty incredibly plausible that he may have seen himself as a traditional scientist (not a wacky mystical scientist) with strong introversion for a long period, before he agreed he's an intuitive.
There's an additional point here, which is that, while I fully agree Jung would've seen someone with aux-Si as an introverted sensation type, we ALSO need to remember that his portraits in Ch. X seemed to at least somewhat overemphasize what these guys look like without a strong auxiliary in the picture (e.g. his Ti-type portrait treats the other three as inferior functions). Yes, yes, I know that it's still emphasizing the common and typical features, so it's not completely/radically divorced from what the types are like even in normal cases, but basically it's reasonable to suspect the Si-portrait is MOST aptly viewed as emphasizing the irrational type features, and I'd like to think THAT is why Jung would not have fully seen himself in it.
If anything, as a self-perceived rational dominant, Jung would be more inclined to view the T+S features as reflective of him than the especially-irrational type features. And the T+S type features are basically traditional scientist features -- which again, while he factually WAS a traditional scientist only when he was training to be a doctor, probably, he probably THOUGHT of himself as a traditional scientist for a while.
Not because he'd have instead seen himself in the mystics/cranks/prophets portrait of Ni types.