Differentiated/Undifferentiated Feeling

[proteanmix]

I've been reading this book by Marie-Louise von Franz called Psychotherapy since Monday. I adore this book!

Anyways she said something that suddenly made sense to me as to why I get so mad when I'm told to calm down. I think that most people who know me will agree that I'm generally an even tempered person so they're used to seeing a generally upbeat person, but not necessarily always jumping off the walls. I do act like that when I'm with very good friends, but everyone relaxes when they're with people they feel comfortable with. I do get excited over things rather easily. But I wouldn't say that anyone would say it's outside of my typical bounds of behavior.

Anyway von Franz mentioned something about the French having a vocabulary for sentiment as it differs from feeling. The French language has more words to discriminate between the various states of emotion and feeling (which are two different things) than vs. say the German language. She went on to say that the French have more individuated feeling than the Germans. So actually the French tend to find German displays of emotion vulgar, brutish, and unrefined because culturally they're Extroverted thinking.

The inferior feeling of an ETJ or ITP tends to be unrehearsed and coarse as they aren't as skilled in the "language of the heart" as someone whose dominant function is Feeling. I suppose IFJs and EFPs would have less differentiated feeling than an EFJ and IFP, but still more than a ITJ and ETP and ETJ and ETP.

I'm trying to find a parallel and less pejorative term to explain the thinking of a dominant feeler. Whenever we try to access our inferior function it always feels like grabbing at air. There are fleeting moments when it comes to us very clearly but most of the time we're groping around for it.

So when I try to explain how I think, when I'm actually moving from feeling down through thinking all I can say is that it feels like this...

Yes that. It's like I just trail off. It usually happens when I'm metacognating, trying to figure out why I think what I think, not the thoughts themselves. Figuring how did I arrive at the conclusion and I just made is not easy. That when I think screw this.

She summed it up by saying dominant feelers (EFJs and IFPs) actually are quite detached and discerning (I don't know if that's the right word to use but it'll do for now) in their feeling states and emotions compared to ETJs and ITPs. That's completely topsy-turvy of any MBTI literature today!

And it also seems to be an explanation for why I get so upset when people tell me to calm down! I know I'm not feeling emotional (I definitely know when I'm being emotional because I usually have to go back and apologize to people), but to those who's feeling is not as differentiated as mine it may appear to them that I'm being emotional vs. expressing feeling.

OK, I've got to think this out more so I'll get back to it.

 

[heart]

Yeah I get that sometimes from people when I am trying to assert with them, the "calm down" bit and I am like "STFUA, you already had the chance to listen to my Fi, now eat a measured dose of Te and learn to like it." It is usually not that I am upset, but I know I have to change my tone with them to take me seriously, so it is calculated.

My ISFP friend is always being accused of being "really pissed off" when she's just determined.

 

[Atomic Fiend]

For this reason in school I never got in trouble. I only expressed anger when necessary, and quite honestly people assumed I had no emotions, so for those instances when I did snap, everyone always knew it was for a damn good reason.

 

[proteanmix]

I just reread my post and I want to make something clearer.

Differentiation of a function and individuation of a function are two different things.

A function is differentiated when it is distinct and separate from another function. For example, when Si is differentiated from Ni or Te from Fe, Se from Ne, etc. They're like embryonic stem cells that haven't taken on their role yet, unformed. Notice they tend to be oriented the same way. It seems to me that I wouldn't be hard to differentiate Ti from Fe or Si from Ne. That's when you get cases like me, I can't tell if I'm an ESFJ or ENFJ because maybe the two functions haven't differentiated enough.

A function is individuated when it's reached it's maturity, or when you're seeing a function on it's A-game doing what it does best. It's like a stem cell that is destined to be a kidney cell, it knows it's purpose. This is why someone can prefer the use of a function but not be competent or proficient at it because it's not yet matured and it's power properly harnessed. Individuation is part of the differentiation process.

The terms individuation and differentiation are used differently depending on the psychoanalytic context.

http://pandc.ca/?cat=car_jung&page=major_archetypes_and_individuation
http://www.schuelers.com/ChaosPsyche/part_1_27.htm
http://www.nyaap.org/index.php/id/7/subid/46
http://www.compilerpress.atfreeweb.com/1. Jungian Lexicon.htm#Differentiation