Jung's Basic Approach: the Two and the Four

 I have now swept over the map of Jung's Psychological Types, and I have a few preliminary things to report.

In his Introduction he tells us there are two fundamental tendencies among people: introversion and extraversion. Introversion he defines as preoccupation with the subject (one's interior processes) and extraversion as preoccupation with the object (what is outside oneself). He calls these "the two mechanisms".

Then he tells us that there are also "four psychological basic functions": thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. He says that he will be mapping the two "mechanisms" onto the four "basic functions", to yield eight "types".

He then spends the first nine chapters surveying what people have said throughout history about types, before laying out his description of the eight types. He only claims (I think) to say there are eight "things" and then a "type" would be defined as one in whom one of the things predominates.

During this thinking/researching session I have both skimmed over this table of contents as well as looked at one website that introduces readers to the MBTI understanding of "eight functions", and also delved a bit into David Keirsey (just the Wikipedia page), who partly charted his own path with "four temperaments" that were fundamental to his model.

I can't remember where I read that Jung may have also thought of an auxiliary to the predominant type. I may be imagining that-- I am not going to be embarrassed about this; ESI / ISFj (ISFP in MBTI) that I am, I throw up my hands when my logic gets tangled or frayed. I will have to read chapter ten thoroughly, to see if he hinted at the auxiliary aspect of type which is so key to the first published system of 16 types-- the MBTI.

The innovation of Socionics is to say that all eight types are represented in every individual psyche, and to note that if you know the dominant (aka "base") and auxiliary (aka "creative"), you know how the remaining are arrayed in the conscious and unconscious regions. Everyone having all eight, but in different arrangements of power and competency, makes us all "the same" while also all different and complementary to each other and interdependent.

We are awash in information as we function as living entities and the ordering of our filters determines our type. Filtering takes energy, and it takes a lifetime to learn how to budget the expenditure of energy optimally among our filters of varying strength and quality.

The dual relation is a keystone concept of Socionics. I am toying with making the supervisory relation the foundation of my personal offshoot of Socionics (if in fact that is what I am doing with all of this). Submission to "God" (and only "God") is central to the Abrahamic faiths. I'm not sure how many people know that "islam" actually means "submission" in Arabic. As a Christian I've been taught that chesed in Hebrew can be translated "loving-kindness" or also "covenant love". God makes a covenant with people, not as business partners make with each other, but as a sovereign makes with someone not in a position to negotiate, and the asymmetric power relationship described in Socionics can be mapped to our position before God.

I think I've digressed a bit so I will leave discussing my personal experience with the supervisory relation to another time.

One more thing that I wanted to get down, before I stop-- I want to balance my emphasis on typology with understanding of what "Jungian analysis" involves, apart from personality focus. Obviously dreams are central for them. Dreams are also central to the idea of "inspiration" in the Hebrew scriptures: in the Book of Joel, we find this:

Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. (Joel 2:28)

This is how "God speaks to people": through other people, and through the subconscious.