What MBTI type was Carl Jung

[Mal12345]

Mapping people like Jung did is usually a Ti talent. I can feel the craving cry within me, the logical beast that cries to be unleashed and to put whole of humanity into 16 boxes...

Jung did much, much more than create these "mappings." He investigated mystical experiences, including his own hallucinatory Ni states.

 

[Mal12345]

So what say you? INTP?

I can't find any of the passages I read when I first got into typology, but he pretty heavily alludes to identifying with sensing and thinking, from what I recall.

Jung said that type can change with age. He alluded to himself as an intuitive child and a sensor as an older adult.

 

[WALMART]

Jung said that type can change with age. He alluded to himself as an intuitive child and a sensor as an older adult.

Interesting, I've thought the same. Well, I am glad that can be established between us.

 

[RaptorWizard]

Jung did much, much more than create these "mappings." He investigated mystical experiences, including his own hallucinatory Ni states.

This is a big reason my first choice on Jung's MBTI type is INFJ. He was very much a psychic who could penetrate deep into the mind and uncover the great mysteries of consciousness. He used many pseudo-sciences such as astrology and magic to make his intentions immanent within the world. Jung was basically a visionary with a humanitarian ideal inside for the right state of awareness and global oneness, connecting with the divine.

 

[Mal12345]

This is a big reason my first choice on Jung's MBTI type is INFJ. He was very much a psychic who could penetrate deep into the mind and uncover the great mysteries of consciousness. He used many pseudo-sciences such as astrology and magic to make his intentions immanent within the world. Jung was basically a visionary with a humanitarian ideal inside for the right state of awareness and global oneness, connecting with the divine.

Coincidentally, the last MBTI call I made on Jung's type was INFJ. That was a few months back.

 

[INTP]

This is actually a very good piece of information in favor of Jung being an INTP. However, there's a few contingencies that could point the other way:
1. We don't actually know if Carl Jung knew his own type (and he founded the theory so you would think he should, but it's not a fact).
2. He may have been playing a game with us. Just because someone says one thing doesn't mean that they aren't really thinking something else.
3. Maybe under his own set of definitions in his context he really did fit the category of an INTP, but perhaps the system he was using was incomplete and lacked proper classifications.
4. He has not only claimed to be an INTP, but he's also claimed to be an ISTP, as you can see in the Jung identified himself as both INTP and ISTP link.

Ultimately, you can choose to see Jung from what you perceive to be a factual standpoint as an INTP, but it doesn't change the reality of what type he really was, except in your own ideology.

Jung said that type is nothing static, this can be interpreted in multiple ways. Personally i see it leaning that in different situations people can behave as if they were another type. Natural scientist needs to look at facts about concrete reality and not hypothize too much without evidence and derive logical solutions out of the concrete facts that can be observed. Therefore its no wonder that S and T was most prominent in him when doing that sort of task.

 

[INTP]

Jung did much, much more than create these "mappings." He investigated mystical experiences, including his own hallucinatory Ni states.

I investigate mystical experiences aswell and do this active imagination thing that jung was doing(please gimme a source for him hallucinating..) quite frequently. Does this make me an INFJ aswell? Also why do you say "Ni" states?

 

[Mal12345]

I investigate mystical experiences aswell and do this active imagination thing that jung was doing(please gimme a source for him hallucinating..) quite frequently. Does this make me an INFJ aswell? Also why do you say "Ni" states?

http://beyondmeds.com/2009/09/20/carl-jung/

What happened next to Carl Jung has become, among Jungians and other scholars, the topic of enduring legend and controversy. It has been characterized variously as a creative illness, a descent into the underworld, a bout with insanity, a narcissistic self-deification, a transcendence, a midlife breakdown and an inner disturbance mirroring the upheaval of World War I. Whatever the case, in 1913, Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. Grappling with the horror of some of what he saw, he worried in moments that he was, in his own words, “menaced by a psychosis” or “doing a schizophrenia.”

He later would compare this period of his life — this “confrontation with the unconscious,” as he called it — to a mescaline experiment. He described his visions as coming in an “incessant stream.” He likened them to rocks falling on his head, to thunderstorms, to molten lava. “I often had to cling to the table,” he recalled, “so as not to fall apart.”

Whereas introverted sensation is mainly confined to the perception of particular innervation phenomena by way of the unconscious, and does not go beyond them, intuition represses this side of the subjective factor and perceives the image which has really occasioned the innervation. Supposing, for instance, a man is overtaken by a psychogenic attack of giddiness. Sensation is arrested by the peculiar character of this innervation-disturbance, perceiving all its qualities, its intensity, its transient course, the nature of its origin and disappearance in their every detail, without raising the smallest inquiry concerning the nature of the thing which produced the disturbance, or advancing anything as to its content. Intuition, on the other hand, receives from the sensation only the impetus to immediate activity; it peers behind the scenes, quickly perceiving the inner image that gave rise to the specific phenomenon, the attack of vertigo, in the present case. It sees the image of a tottering man pierced through the heart by an arrow. This image fascinates the intuitive activity; it is arrested by it, and seeks to explore every detail of it. It holds fast to the vision, observing with the liveliest interest how the picture changes, unfolds further, and finally fades. In this way introverted intuition perceives all the background processes of consciousness with almost the same distinctness as extraverted sensation senses outer objects. For intuition, therefore, the unconscious images attain to the dignity of things or objects.

PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES 505-6

 

[RaptorWizard]

I saw somewhere that Jung typed Einstein as an extraverted-thinking type! Anyone who calls Einstein a Te would be fighting against mountains of information to the contrary. Here's why:

1. Einstein didn't reason by measures and evidence. He instead trusted what fit his own internal model of logic, and would be very slow to accept what didn't fit within that (like saying quantum mechanics was wrong because "God does not play dice").
2. If you type in the words "Einstein INTP" into the google search bar, you will get a whole supercluster of results in favor of him being an INTP, and pretty much every typologist who includes famous examples in an INTP profile will have Einstein at the top of their list. He is their poster-boy.
3. The cause-and-effect theory developed by Newton is based on dynamics and continual transformations, whereas Einstein's theory in constrast is all about comparing things to static frames of reference, so gravity is a very NiTe thing to invent, and relativity is a very TiNe thing to create. (Of course Newton is also typed commonly as 5w6, and Einstein as a 5w4, so I'm sure that's also a factor).

If it looks like I'm calling into question the typing competence of Carl Jung, I am. Still, he came before the theory was well-developed, so he didn't have all that much to work with.

 

[SolitaryWalker]

I saw somewhere that Jung typed Einstein as an extraverted-thinking type! Anyone who calls Einstein a Te would be fighting against mountains of information to the contrary. Here's why:

1. Einstein didn't reason by measures and evidence. He instead trusted what fit his own internal model of logic, and would be very slow to accept what didn't fit within that (like saying quantum mechanics was wrong because "God does not play dice").
2. If you type in the words "Einstein INTP" into the google search bar, you will get a whole supercluster of results in favor of him being an INTP, and pretty much every typologist who includes famous examples in an INTP profile will have Einstein at the top of their list. He is their poster-boy.
3. The cause-and-effect theory developed by Newton is based on dynamics and continual transformations, whereas Einstein's theory in constrast is all about comparing things to static frames of reference, so gravity is a very NiTe thing to invent, and relativity is a very TiNe thing to create. (Of course Newton is also typed commonly as 5w6, and Einstein as a 5w4, so I'm sure that's also a factor).

If it looks like I'm calling into question the typing competence of Carl Jung, I am. Still, he came before the theory was well-developed, so he didn't have all that much to work with.

Doesn't mean anything, INTP MBTI enthusiasts claim him as one of their own for the same reason that theists do as well. The trouble is, Einstein wasn't a theist by the conventional sense of the term. Chances are, he also had little in common with the average "INTP" you'll find on the internet, regardless of what his type was.

 

[Mal12345]

I saw somewhere that Jung typed Einstein as an extraverted-thinking type! Anyone who calls Einstein a Te would be fighting against mountains of information to the contrary.

Maybe so, but I don't see where Carl Jung made such a bold, audacious claim.

 

[RaptorWizard]

Maybe so, but I don't see where Carl Jung made such a bold, audacious claim.

If extraversion is dominant, thinking will be directed toward the external world (e.g., a scientist like Darwin or Einstein).

I believe I read the above passage somwhere, but I had to copy it out of a google book. It's weird how it disappeared.

 

[Mal12345]

If extraversion is dominant, thinking will be directed toward the external world (e.g., a scientist like Darwin or Einstein).

I believe I read the above passage somwhere, but I had to copy it out of a google book. It's weird how it disappeared.

He said that about Darwin but not Einstein. Perhaps you were found unworthy of possessing such a great work of literature, so it vanished?

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Doesn't mean anything, INTP MBTI enthusiasts claim him as one of their own for the same reason that theists do as well. The trouble is, Einstein wasn't a theist by the conventional sense of the term. .

This is correct. However, it also true that he was not an atheist in the conventional sense, either. I'm not sure why antitheists claim Einstein as an atheist while simultaneously repudiating pantheism. I agree that pantheism has a lot in common with atheism, but there are many antitheists who don't see it that way.

 

[Mal12345]

This is correct.

How so? What is the unstated reason that "INTP MBTI enthusiasts" do this? And why do you agree with it?

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

How so? What is the unstated reason that "INTP MBTI enthusiasts" do this? And why do you agree with it?

I was not referring to that part, actually. I was dealing with the "theism" part. I should have removed the MBTI reference from the quote, I suppose.

 

[Mal12345]

Ah, I was not dealing with this part. I was dealing with the "theism" part. I should have removed that from the quote, I suppose.

Then I'll ask [MENTION=14179]SolitaryWalker[/MENTION] what his unstated "reason" is. He stated that A does something for the same reason that B does something, i.e., INTP MBTI enthusiasts want to claim Einstein as one of their own FOR THE SAME REASON that theists do.

 

[OrangeAppled]

Reading between the lines can be more interesting . Reading Jung's descriptions of the types shows such a bias against Fe & a Te that I have hard time seeing him as Je-aux. His description of Fe is the worst of the 8 & filled with the most bias. He compares Te & Ti in a way that sounds like he's got a chip on his shoulder concerning Ti being just as valid as Te (which is how he describes Ti-dom too - with an inferiority complex).

I think Jung is a Ti-dom, then. His theory focuses less on the auxiliary than "play" between the dominant & inferior though. While most people think the tertiary is the same orientation as the dominant, this was never stated by Jung. Some have suggested the aux & tert are both of the same orientation, which would make distinctions between many types very minor (ie. an IxTP would be very possible). It's possible Jung didn't even think the functions besides the dom & inferior have orientations at all (although that the aux is opposite is implicated pretty clearly to most). In which case, I could see him as simply identifying as a Ti-dom with a preference for iNtuition, without needing to define more than that because perhaps he thought it's not defined that way in a person's psychology. He DID state he had a stronger preference for thinking & intuition than sensing or feeling. That came straight from the man's mouth. Sure, he could get his own type wrong or believe it changes, but that's even less founded speculation than thinking he is Ti-N.

I just don't see him as INFJ, not interviews or in his writing. He writes with a kind of heavy-handedness that sounds more like a Ti-dom than a Ni-dom. I don't see his as an ISTP either, certainly not in MBTI. His outward expression sounds like he extroverts iNtuition to me, not Sensing. So yes, I type him as INTP, or closest to that.

 

[Mal12345]

Reading between the lines can be more interesting . Reading Jung's descriptions of the types shows such a bias against Fe & a Te that I have hard time seeing him as Je-aux. His description of Fe is the worst of the 8 & filled with the most bias. He compares Te & Ti in a way that sounds like he's got a chip on his shoulder concerning Ti being just as valid as Te (which is how he describes Ti-dom too - with an inferiority complex).

I think Jung is a Ti-dom, then. His theory focuses less on the auxiliary than "play" between the dominant & inferior though. While most people think the tertiary is the same orientation as the dominant, this was never stated by Jung. Some have suggested the aux & tert are both of the same orientation, which would make distinctions between many types very minor (ie. an IxTP would be very possible). It's possible Jung didn't even think the functions besides the dom & inferior have orientations at all (although that the aux is opposite is implicated pretty clearly to most). In which case, I could see him as simply identifying as a Ti-dom with a preference for iNtuition, without needing to define more than that because perhaps he thought it's not defined that way in a person's psychology. He DID state he had a stronger preference for thinking & intuition than sensing or feeling. That came straight from the man's mouth. Sure, he could get his own type wrong or believe it changes, but that's even less founded speculation than thinking he is Ti-N.

I just don't see him as INFJ, not interviews or in his writing. He writes with a kind of heavy-handedness that sounds more like a Ti-dom than a Ni-dom. I don't see his as an ISTP either, certainly not in MBTI. His outward expression sounds like he extroverts iNtuition to me, not Sensing. So yes, I type him as INTP, or closest to that.

I've seen the same "argument from writing style" many times. Yet Jung himself focused on topics, not on writing style, when typing.

 

[OrangeAppled]

I've seen the same "argument from writing style" many times. Yet Jung himself focused on topics, not on writing style, when typing.

That was the sidepoint in the post. The rest was about a bias that comes through, an attitude/view indirectly expressed, not a style.