(Informal correspondence, used with the author’s permission. All rights reserved.)
For a very long time, I have believed that Jung’s native type was introverted intuition, with extraverted thinking as his auxiliary, what the MBTI would code as INTJ. I can’t see him as an introverted thinking type, with extraverted intuition (INTP).
I give the argument for my view of Jung’s type in the tapes I recorded for the Chicago Jung Institute, “A New Model of Psychological Types.” But I also agree with some that Jung himself wouldn’t–confronted–have admitted to anything, and with others who have noticed that Jung himself liked to give the impression that introverted thinking was superior in him (in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he implies that he had to sacrifice his superior thinking to realize his intuition).
For me, a lot depends upon the type of the anima, and judging from his encounter in active imagination with the blind Salome, I would say that anima was extraverted sensation. There’s little or no evidence for an extraverted feeling anima in Jung–and much evidence that the feeling he did have was introverted feeling (which those of you who know my model I would locate in the third position [tertiary], that of the puer aeternus, giving him a narcissistic, self-serving way of privileging his own feelings over those of others that did not feel like a mature integrity, but a form of self-indulgence).
He was however extraordinarily generous, as well as generative with his thinking, which is why we are all the beneficiary of his psychological ideas, truly the mark of a fatherly extraverted thinking, which as you know I would place in the second position [auxiliary] for him.
Illustration from a lecture given by Dr. Beebe
Explanatory notes:
Dr. Beebe usually represents the cognitive processes as arms on a cross as shown above.
In this case, he places the “dominant” or “superior” process on the left of the horizontal axis; the “auxiliary” or “good father” process at the top of the vertical axis; the “tertiary” or “puer aeternus” at the bottom of the vertical axis; the “inferior” or “animus” at the right of the horizontal axis.
The pattern he ascribes to Jung follows the same sequence as preferred by the INTJ type: Introverted iNtuition (Ni); Extraverted Thinking (Te); Introverted Feeling (Fi); Extraverted Sensing (Se).
Hi, do you know why Dr. Beebe placed the auxiliary-tertiary axis vertically in the diagram you’ve included?
Does it have something to do with Jung trying to make that axis his “spine of integrity”, resulting in what Dr. Beebe says “did not feel like a mature integrity”?
It’s based on an original diagram that Jung used. For some reason, he always placed the “superior” at the left.
Recently, my wife came across a passage that may provide further support for this hypothesis…
In “Psychology of the Unconscious” Jung writes (as a criticism of Freud):
“Even if there can be no doubt about the sexual origin of music, still it would be a poor, unaesthetic generalization if one were to include music in the category of sexuality. A similar nomenclature would lead us to classify the cathedral of Cologne as mineralogy because it is built of stones.”
It strikes us there’s a contemptuous flavor to Jung’s words, and if one assumes that Introverted Thinking is the domain of “classifying” and “categorizing,” it seems we might be seeing a typical INTJ 6th function senex usage of that process in that passage.
I have also thought Jung was INTJ. A friend of mine who has studied this all his life says he is definitely INxJ (dominant introvert intivitive).
I have lots of INTP academic friends but they are dominant thinkers (judgers) and do not show the same kind of creativity and expansiveness that I think Jung’s work represents. INTPs tend to be better at limiting their work to critically pragmatic bounds which are effective in academia but don’t seem to show the expansive creativity that came from Jung’s dominant intuitive insights.
I admire INTP academics for their effectiveness but for creativity and expansiveness I vote for INTJ for Jung.
Update — my wife recently came across some more evidence for Jung being INTJ. Read all about it here:
http://www.typeinsights.com/blog/announcement/news-flash/