What is psychological types?

Carl Jung, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Carl Jung answers

The typology begins with a simple observation forced on me by years of clinical work: individuals differ not only in the familiar dimension of introversion and extraversion, but also according to which basic psychological function habitually dominates their conscious life.¹ From a great number of possible attitudes I brought four into especial relief — thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition — and where one of these functions prevails habitually, lending a certain stamp to the character, I speak of a psychological type.²

Each function does distinct work. Sensation is all perception by means of the sense organs; thinking is the function of intellectual cognition and the forming of logical conclusions; feeling is a function of subjective evaluation; and intuition I hold to be perception by way of the unconscious, the apprehension of hidden possibilities and backgrounds that belong to a complete picture of any given moment.³

For a complete orientation of consciousness all four should cooperate equally — but in reality this is seldom so. As a rule one function stands in the foreground while the rest remain relatively undifferentiated.⁴ The sensation type restricts himself to the concrete perception of reality; the thinking type cannot adapt to what he cannot comprehend intellectually; the feeling type orients entirely by what is pleasant or its reverse; and the intuitive abandons every situation in which no further possibilities are scented.⁵

These four types divide further along two axes. Thinking and feeling, because they judge and evaluate, I call rational; sensation and intuition, because they simply perceive without imposing a judgment, I call irrational.⁶ And each of the four can belong equally well to the introverted or the extraverted class, according to whether libido moves preferentially inward toward the subject or outward toward the object.⁷

Introverted thinking, for instance, begins in the subject and returns to the subject — external facts are not its aim and origin, even when the thinker would like to make it appear so.⁸ One-sidedness is the price of every type. What the type develops in consciousness, it neglects elsewhere, and the unconscious compensates: behind the introvert's conscious attitude there exists an unconscious extraverted position that automatically balances the one-sidedness he cannot see in himself.⁹

This is why the typology is not a catalogue of fixed characters but a map of dynamic tensions — and why the aim of psychological development is precisely the differentiation of those functions that the type has left in the dark.

Sources

1. My experience has taught me that individuals can quite generally be differentiated, not only by the universal difference of extra and introversion, but also according to individual basic psychological functions.

   Psychological Types

2. a type is a characteristic model of a general attitude occurring in many individual forms... In so far as such an attitude is habitual, thus lending a certain stamp to the character of the individual, I speak of a psychological type.

   Psychological Types

3. Under the heading sensation I include all perception by means of the sense organs; by thinking I understand the function of intellectual cognition, and the forming of logical conclusions; feeling is a function of subjective evaluation, and intuition I hold to be perception by way of the unconscious, or the perception of an unconscious content.

   Contributions to Analytical Psychology

4. in reality it is seldom or never that these fundamental functions are uniformly developed and correspondingly disposable by the will. As a rule one or another function is in the foreground, while the rest remain in the background, relatively or quite undifferentiated.

   Contributions to Analytical Psychology

5. Such people I describe as sensation types... I term such people thinking types... These are the feeling types... intuitives concern themselves neither with ideas nor with feeling reactions, nor yet with the reality of things, but give themselves up wholly to the lure of possibilities.

   Contributions to Analytical Psychology

6. The thinking and the feeling types belong to the former [rational]. The intuitive and the sensational to the latter [irrational].

   Psychological Types

7. A further differentiation into two classes is permitted by the preferential movements of the libido, namely introversion and extraversion. All the basic types can belong equally well to the one or the other class.

   Psychological Types

8. Introverted thinking is primarily orientated by the subjective factor... It begins in the subject, and returns to the subject, although it may... External facts are not the aim and origin of this thinking.

   Psychological Types

9. in the case of an introvert, for example, there exists alongside, or rather behind his conscious attitude, an unconscious extraverted attitude which automatically compensates his conscious one-sidedness.

   Contributions to Analytical Psychology