deathwarmedup said:
My recent partial re-reading of Gifts Differing showed no sign of alternating attitudes either.
It's been a bit of time since I read it, but I'm quite sure that Myers is the pioneer of the alternating attitudes, which she extracts as HER interpretation of the "in every respect different" which Jung ascribes to the aux function. She pretty expressly disagrees with Jung.
I think it was for poorly construed reasons, but there are other better reasons for considering alternating attitudes.
Okay. But, "Fe" ....say.... if in second place, seems to me to be assumed to be a distinct drive to consider other's feelings.... or whatever - we'll not splice hairs here. In an IXFJ it is something that's at work in a very active way. This suggests something rooted in a more substantial base than the philosophical one you propose? And "Se", to me, seems just that - a very classic expression of extroversion proper. I can't see it being motivated by anything less tangible than the physiological processes of extraversion.
Well I'm saying there are two ways we can conceive of the definition of extraverting/introverting that I really think deserve to be separated out. I'm saying one of them is such that it would make sense to double up...or rather, just to assign the e/i to the attitude of consciousness, and say anything we do consciously proceeds to support the conscious attitude. In the other sense, it makes sense to alternate. Philosophically it is very hard to conceive of forming a picture of reality where we don't have to balance the subjective/objective factors (else it leads to at the extremes denial of the existence of consciousness on one end or solipsism on the other).
But in terms of the definition of reflective/solitary vs the opposite, one can certainly tend to exercise all one's functions with a single attitude in mind.
Also, if this is a theoretical aspect that Jung never bothered with nor Isobel Myerrs (I'll stand corrected if I'm wrong on that latter one) and you have to "think endlessly"
No it isn't something Jung didn't consider, it's just recognizing that his category of e/i is quite overstuffed and he didn't go into enough depth on the philosophical side (but he did seem to consider how people like Kant are introverts -- he types Kant as the prototypical Ti dominant.... and he does seem to be appealing to Kant's focus on the a priori and the inherent place the structure of the mind has in gaining knowledge in his philosophy, used to respond to some of Hume's skeptical empiricism), trying to explain it away by the personality side, which is basically just the attitude of consciousness (it's part of his struggle with being a bit of a mystic, and trying to pass off his disagreements with other thinkers as a result of psychological type...) -- it contains an admixture of philosophical and personality versions of inner and outer orientation, and it tries to claim that many of the former stem from the latter. Jung also stuffed into his category many facets of personality which separate under factor analysis in the Big 5. In fact, he almost viewed e/i the "main deal" of personality, and while he was quite insightful, it seems very well justified to separate out the parts to analyze what's really going on.
The endless thought was mainly because there's a lot of contradictions between Jung/Myers, and unnecessary confusion over this, and it took a lot of time to resolve, but I think I have well-motivated reasons for all the positions I hold now.
So many people tried to tell me that there's no such thing as double introvert/extravert based on Myers/Harold Grant dogma, when Jung himself disagreed.
One hint as to how Jung was confused on e/i is that he typed Freud/Adler somewhat inconsistently .... and he seemed to never quite know how to settle on whether something was someone's
work or the person themselves at work. So e.g. he felt Adler's philosophy was introverted, while his personality was extraverted. Yet he typed Adler an introvert. There's often criticism of Jung for seeming to type Freud an extravert, given he was OBVIOUSLY an introvert in personality compared to Adler. This all led me to strongly suspect Jung was overstuffing his category/it was leading to lack of clarity.
I had to figure out why there seemed to be grains of truth to each (the alternating and non-alternating perspectives), and it leads to a complex story. As you surely know, the razor you speak of is about not postulating entities without necessity, not about simplifying reality. Further, even if Jung/Myers didn't consider something, that's a far cry from being not an interesting thing to study in its own right. What if this theory is
more interesting than what either of them talked of (not saying it is, just saying a priori there's no reason given one way or another).
Just in case you are interested, here's Beebe at around 8:28 onwards...next couple minutes, he explains how Jung seemed to see all your main functions as in the same attitude.
YouTube