we should recognize that not all of the eight functions follow hero psychology in being measurable by their degree of strength. They do not, in actual experience, follow a descending hierarchy of differentiation
from first (superior) through fourth (inferior) to eighth.
Rather, the strength, and the kind of strength, a function of consciousness displays is a consequence of the archetypal role associated with it, and archetypes are differently developed in different people. The numbering of the positions is a bit of an anachronism, left over from the early days of Jungian psychology and of Isabel Briggs Myers’ adaptation of that psychology to the analysis of the MBTI® findings. When I use numbering today, in these post-heroic times, the numbers are meant to be read as qualitative rather than quantitative, much the way the numbers of streets can be read in a well-differentiated city that one is intimately acquainted with.
Thus the “second” and “third” functions are identified, like avenues in New York City, by the qualities experience has taught us to recognize when we are actually in those places.