#typology

You know how articles reporting on psycholinguistic experiments often say something like ‘X number of people took part but Y number of people’s results were discounted for various reasons…didn’t understand the instructions, wasn’t paying attention, was generally incompetent…’, well now I can say I have probably just been admitted to that inevitable and illustrious group of rejected data-providers.

First, I did some example tests to get used to the computer and the instructions for the task which involved learning a made-up language. That was all well and good. Then I started the experiment proper. I was plugging away at the exercises, tapping here, tapping there as required until the researcher came in mid-way and told me, in a kindly, roundabout sort of way, that I was being too slow (it was meant to be a short-term memory test after all)!

After that, I sped up as best I could. After the first short-term memory part, I moved on to the second long-term memory one. Essentially they were testing to see what kinds of rules I had learned from part 1. After the experiment there was a quick interview-like section where the experimenter asked me to describe the rules I had learned from the exercises and what I thought this made-up language was. Now here’s the bizarre bit…I correctly spotted that the made-up language was essentially an ergative language - hooray! However, virtually all the rules that I had been using during the experiment (and consequently my answers) were completely wrong!

It turns out they are testing whether certain alignments (e.g. ergative alignment or accusative alignment or some unattested one) are equally learnable or not. I reckon their null hypothesis will be that unattested and attested systems are equally learnable with the aim of demonstrating that typologically-unattested systems are harder to learn. Evidently I find even attested systems hard to learn! I suppose (and hope, for dignity’s sake!) that in every experiment there’s always one such person!

The Performance Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis (PGCH) was put forward by John Hawkins (2004) as an explanation for why grammatical patterns and the frequencies of those patterns cross-linguistically are the way they are.

In essence, it says that linguistic constructions which are easier to process are more likely to be grammaticalised. Conversely, those which are harder to process are less likely to be grammaticalised. Furthermore, processing ease is hypothesised to underlie our preferences for certain constructions over others (where there is competition between constructions) in usage. Linguistic performance thus shapes the grammar.

Hawkins suggests that there are three principles behind the hypothesis. Simplifying horrifically:

Minimise Domains: this basically means make the distance between elements which go together syntactically and semantically as small as possible, e.g. if an adjective goes with a particular noun, put them as close together as possible.

Minimise Forms: this basically means make those elements mentioned above as small and as meaningful as possible, e.g. consider spoken English “I’mma be there” where “I am going to be there” has very much had its form minimised.

Maximise Online Processing: this basically means arrange those elements in such a way that a listener will be able to process the structure of what you’re saying in the most efficient way possible. This involves making structures easier to recognise but also avoiding potential misinterpretations of structure, e.g. “I looked the number up” – consider where you place the “up” as the object gets longer. “I looked the number of my friend who just moved in next door up” vs. “I looked up the number of my friend who just moved in next door”. If the object is going to be very long, it is better to put “up” straight after the verb so that the verb (and its idiomatic meaning) can be recognised sooner. When the object isn’t so long, as in “I looked the number up,” efficiency isn’t greatly affected.

Note that language users flout these principles all the time, e.g. for stylistic effect, and are not consciously aware of them.

Using these three principles, Hawkins’ theory makes some very strong and interesting predictions about the types of patterns found in the languages of the world, and about which patterns are more likely or unlikely to be found.

Reference

Hawkins, J. (2004). Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Scotttrembls raised an interesting point: “Do you know if there’s any evolutionary relationships between SVO, SOV and VSO languages? The evolutionary explanation never seems to come up- has this already been disporved or do we not understand enough about language evolution?”

There’s no evolutionary relationship in the sense that all SVO languages are genetically related and separate from all SOV languages etc. SOV, SVO and VSO languages are distributed throughout the world and are found in many different language families. But we know that languages can change types over a period of time so, in this sense, there are evolutionary paths from one type to another. For example, Old English and Latin are considered to be canonically SOV languages but their descendants (English and the modern Romance languages) are SVO languages. You might wonder when an SOV language stops being an SOV languages and becomes an SVO language. You have to bear in mind that these types refer to canonical structures, languages may use other structures at the same time but their use will be more restricted (although there are languages which many would characterise as being ‘free word order’ in which case they would not fall into any of these categories). For example, English is canonically SVO, but English uses other word orders for questions, focus structures etc. So the relative frequencies of particular structures within a language may change over time resulting in what appears to be a single type-switch.

Work on implicational universals (universals of the form which says if a language has structure X then it will have structure Y) initiated by Joseph Greenberg and taken further by John Hawkins makes some interesting predictions for language change. Greenberg’s formulations were for the most part tendencies, i.e. if X then Y significantly more often than not, but Hawkins aimed to identify exceptionless universals which often involved adding extra conditions, i.e. if X then, if Y then Z. This places more constraints on the forms languages can take but it also makes strong predictions about evolutionary paths of language change. The reasoning is roughly: if these formulations hold for the present situation and if there is no reason to assume things were any different in the past then languages can only move through allowed ‘states’ as determined by the strong implicational universals.

We understand enough about the evolution of some language families to be able to test these predictions and the predictions have been largely correct so far. However, many would not take this evolutionary picture to be an ‘explanation’, rather it is seen as a ‘description’ of the facts which allows us to characterise possible evolutionary paths of change and distinguish them from impossible ones. Given that each stage of a language is a present-day language in its time, it is still ultimately up to the explanations offered by formal and functional approaches to account for the form a language takes at any particular point in its evolutionary history.

When people study language typology they study the ways in which languages vary. However, it’s more than just saying different languages use different words or these languages use very similar sounds. We study the ways in which structural features of languages differ (or are similar) and many go further asking questions about what the limits of linguistic structural variation are.

English speakers will know that in a simple transitive clause we start with the subject followed by the verb followed by the object, e.g. ‘Bob (S = subject) likes (V = verb) pizza (O = object)’, i.e. English has typically SVO word order. But are there other ways of arranging such a structure? Logically there are six ways: SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV, OVS. The next question that a typologist will ask is how are languages distributed across these possibilities. As a null hypothesis we might think that we would expect to find roughly equal numbers of languages in each group, but this is not what we find at all. SVO and SOV account for around 85% of all languages (with SOV being a bit more frequent than SVO). Adding VSO languages brings the total to around 95% of all languages. The question is: why is the distribution of languages so skewed?

Three broad types of answers suggest themselves as candidates (at least to my mind):

1)     It could be down to chance – the distribution of languages today may represent a highly skewed sample. If we came back in 1,000 years we might see a completely different distribution. This approach is obviously not taken by language typologists. There is certainly something interesting about the distribution which demands an explanation. To write the pattern off as due to chance would be to miss potentially significant insights into the ways languages are structured and shaped.

2)     The formal aspects of human language (perhaps as encoded by Universal Grammar) constrain the surface forms that human languages can inevitably take, i.e. variation is not limitless though it may be apparently vast.

3)     The functional pressures that act on speakers and hearers every time they use language will affect which forms languages will prefer to take, i.e. structures that are easier to say and to comprehend will be preferred and so will come to dominate amongst the languages of the world.

Given the great success of generative linguistics in the past few decades, (2) is a very popular approach to take. However, many intuitively feel that the approach in (3) is ultimately more satisfactory as an explanation. Personally I’m inclined to think that if we can explain surface variation in terms of performance preferences, this is a good thing because it means there is less for the formal approach to account for. Furthermore formal aspects of language are most often thought to be all-or-nothing affairs. If a grammar rules out a particular structure, that structure cannot exist, whereas if performance factors disfavour a particular structure, that structure will be either non-existent or rare.

But are (2) and (3) incompatible? You might think so given the distinction that’s often made between competence and performance. Many would not consider performance factors as relating to language proper – it is extra-linguistic and not something the linguist should be looking at. But the fact is that all the (overt) language that we use to construct theories of both competence and performance is being ‘performed’ in some way (either spoken or written or signed). I think there may well be limits on variation set by formal properties of human languages (which will account for some of the totally unattested structures) but others will be set by performance. And then maybe others that are to do with physics and biology more generally (here I’m thinking more of phonological typological patterns).

For now then it may be useful to adopt either (2) or (3) as an approach to language typology with the aim of seeing how far they can go, but always with the ultimate aim of putting the two together in the end for a more comprehensive account of why languages are the way they are.

We are here

And if this is true

We got to be, innt ?

the one we are here for

- Ourselves.

Only if only

contemplation could change your world.

- it won’t.

We grief.

And we grief again

And what do we do in between

We love.

Look at me

Eying the my world

In the mirror

Wanting so much to do with it

And so little to the backdrop.

- change and acceptance

To say

We are here and

We’re here

To stay.

I fathom I say and

You say

‘Cause we would like to.

- we would stay if we want to

Here is to

Change -

Change in

Things that matter -

You once thought

Nothing would matter

If “it” changes.

- A toast.

thepersonalquotes:

Up.

Then down.

Then up.

Conclusion -

1. So mostly up.

Good night // thethinkinggirl ☄️

Silence won’t protect me,

but for it will probably save you;

For the time being

I am mum.

The truth about silence // thethinkinggirl

Look what we have become;

Screaming when hating,

Mumbling for when in love.

Paradox // thethinkinggirl

They say

there’s always light in the end of the tunnel-

and I am here to tell you its not.

There isn’t any light;

Cause you are.You become it.

Hopes,Happiness - don’t suddenly appear out of nowhere,

They live within you.

It will blind them for

when its time.

// thethinkinggirl

In your adventures on the internet, you may have encountered this intriguing little test featured on colorquiz.com and other websites. Upon taking it, you may have been impressed, unimpressed, or reserved and skeptical about your results. In any case, you were probably curious about how it works. This article will provide a brief summary and introduction to the theory behind the Luscher Colour Test, and give a rundown of his related typology.

Luscher’s work is supposedly quite popular internationally, especially in Europe, but most of the commentary and research on it is exclusively in German. I can’t read German so I can’t investigate their validity: So, in this article, we will be taking Dr. Luscher on his word, and proceeding as if his research is sound.

Luscher’s theory rests on a couple of fundamental claims. The first is that our emotional and psychological reactions to colour are deep-rooted and pre-conscious. This means that we react a certain way to colours whether we mean to or not, and even whether we know it or not. Our sensation of colour bypasses our conscious brain and interacts directly with our emotional systems and our self-regulating (“Autonomic”) nervous system (abbreviated as “ANS”).

The second is that the essential meaning of any colour is the same for everyone. Their effect on heart-rate, respiration, arousal, metabolism etc. is universal. For example, orange-red is always exciting and stimulating, while dark blue always has a calming effect. However, a person’s subjective attitude towards the effects produced by a colour –  their preferencefor the colour – can vary widely.

This attitude is what Luscher calls the “function”. When taking the colour test, you are asked to rank the colours in order of preference. The idea is that the first colours you pick – the most preferred – are tied to emotional states that you want more of. The short-form notation for this is “+”. The next most preferred colours represent your present situation and emotional state, indicated by “x”. Next are emotional states that are neither preferred nor outright rejected, but restrained, either because the person is indifferent to them or because they are inappropriate to the current circumstances. These are indicated by “=”. Finally, the last colours picked represent states that are disagreeable. They are rejected on the grounds of being unwanted, or wanted but painfully out of reach. These are indicated by “-”.

As for the colours themselves, Luscher derived their significance and meaning in a very interesting way. Influenced by Kant, he started with purely logical distinctions. He asked, What can things do in space? They might be solid, and move things out of their path as needed, like any sturdy materiel; or they might be quiescent, adapting to other shapes, like water or air. In terms of human behaviour, this could be considered the difference between actingon the one hand, and adaptingorperceivingon the other. The final terms Luscher arrived at were “Autonomous” and “Heteronomous”, meaning “self-determined” and “other-determined” respectively. (Parallels to this duality include the Chinese Yang and Yin, as well as Jung’s Animus and Anima).

What do objects do over time? They change or stay the same. In terms of human attention, this becomes a focus on a single subject (the Self), a “Concentric” attitude; or a focus on many changing objects, an “Ex-centric” attitude. (This has certain parallels with Introversion and Extraversion, although they remain separate concepts).

These two distinctions created a classic quaternity: The Autonomous-Concentric, the Heteronomous-Excentric, and so on. Now Luscher changed his methods. He wondered, What emotional states fit into each category? And then, through extensive experimentation and trial-and-error, he found colours that naturally elicited those emotional states. His theory is part empiricism and part pure logic.

The four major colours that make up the quaternity are Dark Blue, Blue-Green, Orange-Red, and Bright Yellow. Their meaning is as follows:

DARK BLUE: Contented Self-Moderation

This colour elicits a feeling of tranquility. It has a universally calming effect on the nervous system (thereby allying itself with the parasympatheticbranch of the ANS). It is Heteronomous and Concentric: meaning, “other-determination of the Self”. The quietude and contentment tied to Blue is a kind of peaceful surrender, a relaxation that allows a person to interact with their deeper feelings. Dark Blue is therefore associated with a certain sensitivity, as well as tenderness towards loved ones. People in this state of dissolved tranquility also tend to be easily hurt.

BLUE-GREEN: Stable Self-Respect

Green is considered one of the “psychological primaries”, but it is not technically a primary colour. It is a mix of Blue and Yellow: it contains a certain tension of light and dark; not a thing-in-itself, but a binding-together. It represents the interlocking beliefs and memories that make up our identity. It is Autonomous and Concentric, meaning “a self-determination of the Self”. It is associated with self-assertion, conviction, obstinacy, and persistence. A person with this sense of immutable identity wants to believe their principles are correct; they want to be in full control of themselves; they have feelings of pride, prestige and even superiority.

ORANGE-RED: Active Self-Confidence

This hue is universally exciting. It stimulates the sympathetic branch of the ANS, which raises pulse, blood pressure, and respiration rate. It is especially associated with arousal and aggression. Like Green, it is Autonomous and wants to be in control; however, it is directed towards external objects (Ex-centric). It is therefore a kind of striving or hunger, associated with desire, domination, and achievement. A person in the stimulated Red state wants to exercise their strength and sexual potency, and experience the present to its fullest. They may also want to be seen as a dynamic and exciting person, bragging or showing-off to convince others of their competence.

BRIGHT YELLOW: Open-Minded Self-Development

Bright Yellow is the lightest of the major colours, and is therefore stimulating like Orange-Red, but it lacks the solidity and purpose of the latter. This colour seems to disperse and disappear into brightness. It represents spontaneity, variability, exhilaration, and hope for the future. It is Heteronomous (other-determined) and Ex-centric (focused on objects), therefore people in this open-ended state are easily carried away with excitement by new people, places, and developments. It represents a total loosening or relaxation, and the possibility of escape from intolerable circumstances. It is a relentlessly cheerful colour that often becomes irritating to the exhausted or depressed.

The four colours have many parallels in our culture. In terms of the classical elements, they are Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. In terms of the Greek Humours, they are the Phlegmatic, Melancholic, Choleric, and Sanguine temperaments. In psychiatric terminology, they are the depressive, obsessive, manic, and paranoid types.

In the Luscher Colour Test, people are expected to pick the four major colours within the first 4 or 5 of their ranking. This is because they represent important psychological and physiological needs. The other four colours of the test are, by design, less appealing (with the possible exception of violet). The genius of this is that they become a foilto the major colours. If someone picks a major colour afterany of the generally unappealing colours, it indicates that the associated emotional state is undergoing a kind of suppression. Something has happened to make it intolerable: A rejected Blue might be someone who cannot relax or let themselves be sensitive; a rejected Green, someone who has fallen from grace and their self-esteem or sense of identity is in tatters. Yellow and Red rejected together often means the person is sick of stimulation: they are physically exhausted, or on the other hand, psychologically withdrawn.

Nevertheless, the major colours represent basic needs, and the underlying motivation of a person is always to meet and acquire them. Therefore a rejected major colour is a “want but can’t have” or a “want, but is too painful to have”. It indicates a stress point in the personality, an anxiety. When this happens, the most preferred colour takes on a compensatory quality. It becomes exaggerated and compulsive, and even if it is the “most wanted” colour of the test-taker, it never truly satisfies them.

On the flip side, one of the “foil” auxiliary colours may be picked in the first half of the test. This indicates a generally negative attitude towards life, and is also classed as an anxiety. The nature of the anxiety differs based on the colour; but if Grey or Black are picked early, it generally means that, for whatever reason, many of the major emotional states have become intolerable and the person is resorting to desperate measures to preserve themselves.

The auxiliary colours are violet, brown, grey and black. Their meaning is as follows:

VIOLET

Violet is a mixture of Red and Blue, two opposite colours. It represents domination and surrender at the same time: an “identification”, a melding-together of subject and object. It represents a desire for a sensitive, intimate, “magical” relationship. It is also something like a waking dream: everything that is thought and imagined must become reality. Violet picked first in the test is very common among children and adolescents, who we tend to consider as living in a “fantasy land”, still protected from the harsher realities of life. (This is meant as a clue about its nature, not that adults who pick Violet first are necessarily the same way). People in the Violet state want to be seen as charming and mysterious, and look for others who can charm them in the same way: they want to “cast a spell” over others and themselves.

BROWN

This hue of Brown is Orange-Red broken down by Black: Therefore it is also tied to the sexual impulse and sensuality, but its energy and vitality are gone. It mainly represents the bodily senses, physical health, and the comfort of home. Normally, it is in the indifferent “=” category, since a well-functioning body should not be the cause of much attention. However, if brown is picked early (meaning it is desired), this indicates that the person wishes for comfort, recuperation, or home. People displaced during World War II showed an especial preference for this colour. If brown is rejected or picked last, this may indicate that the person does not want to associate with any creature comforts, thinking they are made of sterner stuff. This usually produces an anxiety that is compensated by some compulsive sensuous behaviour.

GREY

The grey is devoid of colour (achromatic), and is midway between light and dark. It neither excites nor relaxes. It represents a veil of total neutrality and detachment. In the Luscher Colour Test, it acts as a kind of fence: The colours coming after it have become intolerable, and the person wishes to wall them off with a shield of non-involvement. They may go through the motions of these states in their daily life, but entirely avoid feelingthem. The colours that precede grey are thought of as the only way forward, the only emotional states with which the person is allowed to engage. If grey is picked first, this means that non-involvement is the ultimate value. If it is last, it means that the person wants to experience everything, and will do anything to avoid the horror of neutrality. Grey usually occurs in the 5th to 7th picks.

BLACK

Black is the negation of colour itself. It represents a rejection of the intolerable conditions of life, a total surrender or despair. The colours picked after black have been “given up on” and the person believes they can offer him nothing. The colours picked before black are the only things left to pursue. Black has an intensifying, volatile effect on any colour it is paired with: Yellow and Black picked together, being the brightest and darkest colours of the test, usually means that some catastrophic change is soon to occur. Black is usually picked last in the test.

The Colour Test offers thousands of different possible interpretations, based on the positions, groupings, and interplay of the colours. Decades of use have led to a lot of nuance for an experienced practitioner to keep in mind and take advantage of. Generally, a human practitioner is able to spot more interesting patterns in a set of test results that an automated system like a online quiz. The guidelines for administering and interpreting the test are in the published book, “The Luscher Color Test”.

The system of “Anxiety and Compensation” featured in the Colour Test provides the foundations for an interesting typology. In “The 4-Color Person”, Luscher describes the ideal individual: Someone who is able to balance all four emotional states with their corresponding “senses of self” (self-moderation, self-esteem, self-confidence and self-development). However, most people under-value one or another colour, resulting in an anxiety with a corresponding compensation (an over-valuation of another colour). This system of colour pairs results in 32 “unbalanced” types.

The beauty of this type system is how straightforward and intuitive it is to grasp. For example, someone who over-values Red self-confidence is simply that: over-confident. An over-valuation is a compensation covering up an anxiety: In this case, that anxiety might be tied to the inability to achieve Blue contentment, so that the person is perpetually dissatisfied. Luscher nicknames this type “The Greedy Showoff” or “The Baiting Devil”, depending on whether the exaggerated self-confidence or the lack of contentment is the dominant factor. Let’s look at The Baiting Devil as an example of a combination type:

The baiting devil (Over-valued Red and rejected Blue, with an emphasis on rejected Blue)

Sense of self: Dissatisfaction; Pompous Overconfidence

Behaviour: Disquiet; Agitation; Provoke people in order to create contacts and relationships and to ward off their void (a  life which is devoid of relationships), their boredom, their deserted isolation, and their discontent

Baiting devils are dissatisfied because, although highly excitable and emotionally susceptible, they suffer from their lack of responsiveness, their monotony, and their lack of relationships with others. They feel fine if there is an intense encounter and erotic fascination in a relationship. And they like tasks in which they have to commit themselves personally and totally.

Baiting devils can’t stand people who hide their true feelings behind conventional cliches and, in their boredom, create a gap and a vacuum. So they bait such people. They challenge them with direct or boorish criticism. They try to strike them in their weak points. That makes the baiting devils feel superior, thereby avenging themselves for the inadequate, unsatisfying attempt at contact or for an earlier rejection.

The solution to each type-dilemma is always to accept the rejected sense-of-self, no matter how painful that is in the short-term. In this case, the Baiting Devil must accept Blue self-moderation to ease their relentless agitation and dissatisfaction caused by its suppression. Relaxing the anxiety naturally relaxes the compensation: This person will slow their compulsive and exaggerated expression of Red aggression and showiness, if their efforts are successful. The full explanation, and a description of each type, can be found in the published book “The 4-Color Person”.

In this way, Luscher subscribes to a kind of Stoic philosophy, the one that has been largely abandoned, that states that we actually have control over how we react to life’s events and tragedies – That we create our own happiness, regardless of our circumstances. He uses this analogy: When learning to ride a bike, your circumstances have an impact. You might be in a rough neighborhood (a poor locale); you might have an old, rusted, second-hand bike (having physical defects); you might not even have a teacher (absent parents).

However, none of these things could reallyteach you to ride that bike anyways. This is because the last, most essential step is one that no one can teach or very well explain. To ride a bike, you have to figure out for yourself the sensation of balance. Balancing the four senses of self, achieving the right middle ground that gives you freedom and peace of mind, is something that occurs entirely within yourself, regardless of environmental factors. Again, this is like the Stoic philosophy: You cannot control events, but you can control your reaction to events. Take it for what it’s worth.

Sources:

Luscher, Max, and Scott, Ian. The Luscher Color Test. New York: Random House, 1969. Print.

Luscher, Max. The 4-Color Person. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979. Print.

In this article, we won’t be exploring the introverted and extroverted types so much as the specific mechanisms of introversion and extroversion. In order to isolate these concepts, any time I mention the respective types, imagine them as hypothetical puretypes. A normal type has a conscious mix of both introverted and extroverted factors. Also remember that whatever an individual is consciously, his unconscious compensates him by containing the opposite. So, an introvert is an extrovert in his unconscious, and vice versa.

Jung calls introversion and extroversion the “inward-turning of libido” and “outward-turning of libido” respectively. What he means by libidoorpsychic energy is not the same as Freud’s still-popular concept of sex drive – instead, it is an abstract concept designating the weight of value and interest given to any particular mental content or external object. For example, a psychological function with a large sum of libido is going to be at the forefront of consciousness, highly active and producing thoughts, feelings, hunches, or sense-impressions that are intrinsically interesting and valuable. The unconscious, too, has a dormant sum of libido – dormant, that is, until it activates a content like a complex or a strong emotion, which then bursts into consciousness uninvited. Conscious libido is essentially willpower; unconscious libido is akin to instinctual impulses.

Therefore, the two mechanisms designate the general flow of energy, whether it activates and confers value to external objects, or does the same to inner contents. Extroversion is an interest in the external world, in the multiplicity of objects and people, focussing on their specificity and differences. The Ego is constantly seeking to relate to the object in some way, to affect it or be affected by it, and it finds its identity in its relation to the ever-changing environment. Introversion is an interest in the inner world, on emotion-toned complexes and inner archetypes. It focuses on the similarities between things, so that it can organise them internally under the header of general ideas, which are derived in essence from the archetypes. It seeks to detach itself from the outside world, to keep the inner world in perfect stasis and harmony, and finds its identity in the changelessness of the Ego.

The two mechanisms play an important role in the emotionalityof a personality. Extroversion, as the mechanism that bridges the individual and the outside world, is associated with how the individual reacts emotionally to external stimuli. Extroversion is characterised by a quick, open, and emotion-laden reactivity. We can call this the affectiveoremotionalattitude. Introversion, on the other hand, we can call the detachedattitude, as it seeks to sever ties with the outside world as much as possible. However, while calling the extroverted and introverted types “affective” and “detached” might work at a glance (extroverts appearing active and expressive, introverts appearing passive and inscrutable), it doesn’t hold up to deeper investigation. Introverts often experience the most intense emotions, while extroverts, having a conscious and well-adapted affectivity, dispense with them quickly and easily. This is because the introvert’s conscious detached-ness is compensated by a large unconscious affectivity (extroverted attitude), which finds little expression and, worse still, is empowered by the unstable, primal libido of the unconscious. The extrovert, on the other hand, is unconscious of his detached inner thoughts and feelings (introverted attitude), which have their own morbid character, but not the emotional one of the introvert’s.

This dynamic of the unconscious attitude has a reinforcing effect on the individual’s conscious personality. This is due to the projectionof unconscious contents. When an extrovert projects his unconscious onto external objects, he sees in them the image of his own unconscious personality – that is, passive, detached, inert. Because of the outside world’s apparent harmlessness, he is even more inclined to go out and interact with it freely, and in the process he reclaims his own unconscious inner world. The introvert unfortunately sees the object as having his own unconscious affectivity. The outside world is active and animated, full of things that are dangerous and fearful, reflecting the primal, daemonic nature of the unconscious. This validates the introvert’s impulse to withdraw and defend himself against the outer onslaught, which again represents his own unconscious life. (Remember, these are pure types – the normal individual, while still not seeing objectively, projects a middle-of-the-road mixture of characteristics onto objects.)

Finally, Jung posits that the introvert is characterised by a great psychic tension or inhibition as compared to the extrovert. This is because he is always worried, consciously or unconsciously, that an external stimulus will trigger or disrupt an inner complex, or even worse, one of those volatile, primal affects. An extrovert, who acts in direct relationship to the external world, does not share this fear, and as a result is the more relaxed and disinhibited type. However, each type can act like the other in certain circumstances. An introvert in a safe and familiar environment will be allowed to forget his complexes and relax, while an extrovert left alone to contemplate his own complexes – which are as dangerous and daemonic as the introvert’s affectivity – will jump at the smallest noise.

To recap: Introversion and extroversion designate the movement of libido (= interest) in the psyche. Extroversion is always related to objects; it is the more affective (emotional) and relaxed mechanism. It projects the image of a passive, inert object. Introversion is related to inner contents; it is the more detached and tense mechanism. It projects the image of an active, dangerous object. An introverted attitude is compensated by an extroverted attitude in the unconscious, and vice versa. In a normal type, both the conscious and unconscious personalities will have a mix of both mechanisms.

The inferior function is the Achilles’ Heel of each type. The challenges of life normally make it necessary that an individual develop and rely on one primary tool – their dominant function. However, to the extent that it receives the lion’s share of energy, its opposite (Thinking v. Feeling, Sensation v. Intuition) is deprived of it. As a result, this function consistently lags behind in differentiation and development, becoming the problem child of the whole personality, apparently with a mind of its own.

This lack of energy given to the inferior function essentially amounts to a repression. It’s important to note that this repression is not necessarily total. A Thinking type still has feelings, and a Sensation type will still receive intuitions. However, they are not guided by them per se. In fact, these contents are seldom welcome and rarely usable and productive in the same way that the products of the dominant are. This is because they float up from repressed inferior, which has one foot firmly entrenched in the unconscious. To the extent that it does operate in consciousness, it is always in accordance with the governing principle of the dominant function, often parroting or rephrasing its viewpoints. Its back is broken – it can only function under its own principle in the unconscious.

Before we continue, we should examine the nature of “consciousness” and “the unconscious”. Consciousness has the qualities of illumination, wakefulness, and clarity. It is often represented by the Sun or the civilising Hero. Everything conscious is cleanly divided into its various parts, made useful and in alignment with the individual’s conscious goals and desires. By contrast, the unconscious is murky and hidden from view. It’s represented by the depths of the ocean, or the land below the horizon, the underworld. It contains the untamed “Nature” inside the individual, where everything blends into everything else, operates on instinct, and is not bothered by contradictions. This is the realm that the inferior function finds itself in, which has several consequences.

The first is concretismin the original sense of the word, meaning “grown together”. The inferior function intermingles with other unconscious contents, such as memory-complexes, Freudian urges, or the next-most-repressed function. In particular, the inferior function comes into contact with the mythological archetypes, which contaminate it with a certain fantastical or unreal quality. When the products of the inferior functions are expressed or enter consciousness, they carry these associations with them.

The second consequence is ambitendency. Everything in nature has both a light and a dark aspect, Yin and Yang. It is only in consciousness that these opposites come into conflict, since they have to be separated out in order to function in a directed and productive way. In the unconscious, they exist together. This means that the individual has difficulty making anything much out of the products of his inferior, since they contain their own antitheses – they cancel themselves out. This also means that the inferior has a definite dark side. Often, a person’s nastiest moments are carried out by the inferior, destructive, vindictive, and hell-raising. On the other hand it also has a profound light side. For example, its raw, unadulterated nature means that a person is always completely authentic through their inferior, and it often brings a refreshing, childlike simplicity out of them.

The third is that, like all unconscious contents, the inferior function and its products (that are unable to enter consciousness) are projected. The conscious personality sees its own unconscious as belonging to different people and things in their daily life. The aforementioned dark aspects are projected onto one’s enemies, and the light aspects onto friends and lovers, in either case creating a strong emotional tie. This is a way in which the unconscious can reach the conscious ego in an indirect way, for better or for worse.

As long as consciousness and the unconscious are in good standing with each other, when the individual more or less acts as a cohesive whole, the inferior function provides healthy compensation to the conscious attitude, a tempering voice that helps people consider multiple angles and perspectives. However, when the personality is at odds with itself, when the Ego tries to suppress the unconscious, the healthy compensation turns into outright antagonism. The inferior function then does its best to sabotage the conscious standpoint in order to bring it back in line. This process is described in greater depth in my article on Enantiodromia.

Developing and differentiating the inferior function is something that will be covered in a subsequent article, since it’s an extensive topic in its own right.

To recap: The inferior function is characterised by a lack of energy or attention. It sinks to the unconscious, where it develops the qualities of concretism (contamination by other unconscious contents) and ambitendency (being simultaneously light and dark). Its products are also projected onto other people and things. Normally it provides healthy compensation, but in neurotic circumstances it becomes antagonistic.

The cornerstone of Jung’s psychology is the theory of the collective unconscious. A rough understanding of it – if not more! – is very important for understanding introversion. In my opinion, the fact that people have apparently forgotten it, that no one discusses it on internet typology communities, has caused a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. So, strap in for this one.

Jung’s predecessor and mentor, Freud, first viewed the unconscious as a receptacle (read: trash can) of thoughts, feelings, memories, and above all sexual and aggressive impulses, that people repressed in order to function in civilised society and keep up their peace of mind (or the illusion of it). Jung thought that was just one part of the picture. He thought up a deeper, older, and more fundamental part of the mind; he called it the collective unconscious, and said it was made up of archetypes.

You can picture it something like this: Just as everyone has a body that’s basically the same as every other human body (four limbs, one head, a liver, a heart), so does the mind have a basic substructure common to all of us. Our bodies and psyches are only different on a surface level. That’s why Jung called this part of the unconscious “collective”, in that it’s shared by everyone – not as a single, amorphous “psychic” blob that everyone can access, but as a structure that is born again in every individual. Some parts of it might be as old as the psyche itself, in the same way that parts of our bodies are so old that we share them with other mammals, and even reptiles.

The collective unconscious houses the archetypes. These are typical patterns of thought or cognition, the logical result of all of us having the same nervous system. Some of these structures seem to show up in our imaginations in the same way, time and time again, in specific symbols or archetypal images. Jung called them the “self-portraits of the instincts”. And, in fact, there is a lot of overlap between the concepts of instinctandarchetype: Just as we think of instincts as fixed, automatic, and inborn patterns of behaviour, an archetype is a fixed, inborn pattern of mental activity. Archetypes are tied up with a myriad of facts of human existence, since they’ve developed over millions of years of human and pre-human life. We find the corresponding archetypal images in every culture, in all mythologies and religions, and also in our own spontaneous dreams and fantasies.

For any of our psychological functions, the influence of the outside world is the same as the influence of the collective unconscious, the “inner world”. Extroversion and introversion are where our energy goes, where we direct our interest: Whether we’re trying to grasp, shape, and benefit from something in the outer world, or if we’re trying to do the same with an inner archetype. Introverts do this through their favoured function – Thinking builds theories with the help of the archetypal substructure; Feeling finds powerful, universal values in them. Sensation understands that the things it sees have meaning, pattern, and form; Intuition gets impressions straight from the unconscious imagination. 

Remember that while introverted functions are influenced by the archetypes, we don’t experience them directly. The archetypes themselves are just pattern and form; they’re tendency, not content. They still have to be “filled up” by our personal experiences. Once we’ve “brought one to life” with carefully (but organically!) organised facts, thoughts, and feelings, we can see the archetypal form beneath it all.

We can find an example of this in modern physics’ quest to find a unifying theory of the universe – a “Theory of Everything”. This is a perfect example of Thinking basing itself on an archetype (which would make it IntrovertedThinking). Namely, it’s the archetype of wholeness or unity – what Jung calls the self–  which is often drawn as a mandala: Everything is contained within a circle. Nothing is left out. The physicists build a theory around the archetype, in a way that clearly shows just how compelling it is to them. On the other hand, an Extroverted Thinker might think that kind of project is pointless or even boring, unless he finds himself in an environment where it’s really needed (like a physics academy dominated by Introverts).

To recap: The collective unconscious is an ancient, inherited part of our minds. It’s made up of archetypes, which are fixed patterns of thought and imagination, the mental counterpart to instincts. Archetypes have evolved over millions of years, so they represent many facts of life in abstract forms. Introversion focuses interest and energy on these archetypes, so that any function, when it’s introverted, is drawn to their universal forms.

Everything You Need To Know

“This work sprang originally from my need to define the ways in which my outlook differed from Freud’s and Adler’s. In attempting to answer this question, I came across the problem of types; for it is one’s psychological type which from the outset determines and limits a person’s judgement. My book, therefore, was an effort to deal with the relationship of the individual to the world, to people and things. It discussed the various aspects of consciousness, the various attitudes the conscious mind might take toward the world, and thus constitutes a psychology of consciousness regarded from what might be called a clinical angle.”

- C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

Not everybody approaches the world in the same way. In fact, most people seem to differ from each other greatly – sometimes it seems like a miracle that we can even get along at all! In attempting to explore this problem, Jung devised a system of types that – although not as scientifically rigorous as modern personality inventories like the Big 5 or the MMPI – was simple, elegant, and deep. This should be repeated: Jung’s typology, although rooted in practical experience, is intuitive and symbolic in nature. It is meant firstly as a therapeutic tool and not as a strictly scientific theory.

Jung’s typology is made up of six elements. The first are two attitudes: IntroversionandExtroversion. These represent the direction of interest of the psyche and the movement of its energy, whether inwards or outwards. The others are four functions: Thinking,Feeling,SensationandIntuition. These are modes of operation that, between the four of them, roughly encompass your conscious experience. The shorthand goes like this: Sensation tells us that something is there; Thinking tells us what it is; Feeling tells us if it is agreeable or not; Intuition tells us from where it came and to where it might go.

Introversion is an inwards-turning of energy. It’s an orientation that expresses the supremacy of subjective part of life; one’s inner thoughts, feelings, personal experiences, and the deep unconscious*. This does not mean that introverts are always introspective – instead, their relation to the outside world is coloured by their subjective view in such a way that their perceptions and judgements hinge more on their private inner reality than on the shared reality of the objective world. Because their energy moves away from the object (and towards the subject), they tend to be relatively reserved, inscrutable, and shy.

*Footnote to Introversion: The “deep unconscious” here refers to the Collective Unconscious, which is covered in another article. To summarise, the subject isn’t only made up of personal experiences or memories. Just as we all have an inherited body that is only superficially different between individuals, so do we have an inherited psyche that has evolved over millions of years. Introversion relies particularly heavily on inherited, instinctual images and patterns of thought. Pushed to the extreme, these manifest as a mythological or religious quality of thought, since myths are just the collective expression of these inner archetypes through stories.

Extroversion is an outwards-turning of energy. Here the objective part of life is the most important. Extroverts think and act in a way that corresponds more directly to external conditions. They aren’t necessarily perfectly adjusted – extroversion is no guarantee of good social skills, and furthermore, neglecting their inner life often results in grief for the extrovert. However, they are constantly impelled to relate to the outer world in some way, and in turn to be affected by it, whether that means they’re on good terms with everybody, or that they pick fights with everybody. In general they are relatively open, sociable, jovial, or at least friendly and approachable.

The four functions are made up of two pairs of opposites. Sensation and Intuition make up the first pair. These are the “irrational” orperceiving functions. Sensation takes in impressions of the material world via the five senses, which often results in a pragmatic, grounded, or aesthetically-minded personality. Intuition is a subconscious or subliminal perception that, roughly speaking, presents the user with a whole where only a part is objectively visible. This often results in a speculative, flighty, or imaginative personality. Thinking and Feeling are the “rational” or judgingfunctions. Thinking takes a detached, mechanistic view of problems, and seeks to put the world in conceptual or at least logical terms. Feeling recognises and imparts subjective value onto things, deciding whether or not they are agreeable and good.

However, these functions are never developed and used in an individual to the same extent. As a rule, one becomes the person’s primary approach to life – thedominantfunction. Its incompatible opposite is partially repressed as a result. This becomes theinferiorfunction. The two other functions are in a middle-state of differentiation, and therefore are less harshly polarised. One is usually theauxiliaryfunction, which supports and counterbalances the dominant – a functional sidekick. This is not a hard rule, though: both could be auxiliaries, or both could be undifferentiated inferior functions. However, the most common arrangement consists of two conscious functions, the dominant and main auxiliary, and two unconscious inferior functions.

==============================================================

Fig. 1 - A Thinking dominant, Feeling inferior arrangement. The two middle functions, Sensation and Intuition, are halfway between consciousness and unconsciousness. They can be developed auxiliaries or underdeveloped inferiors.

==============================================================

These dominant-auxiliary combinations begin to paint familiar pictures – the practical problem-solver with Thinking and Sensation, the esoteric creative artist with Feeling and Intuition, etc. The inferior function also tends to be recognisable. We all know people who have terrible difficulties with Feeling, or for whom material reality is always a stumbling block thanks to inferior Sensation.

Finally, in any given function type, a certain attitude will also dominate. This attitude does not exist on its own, but applies to the dominant function, so that the Thinking of a Thinking type might actually be Introverted or Extroverted. The opposite attitude, however, is repressed and combines with the inferior function. The middle functions are again in a more mercurial middle state; they often have the capacity to shift either way. This results in a distinct set of types, which are described in my Jung Abridged series.

To recap: Two attitudes, Introversion and Extroversion. Four functions: two perceiving, that is Sensation and Intuition, and two judging, that is Thinking and Feeling. One is dominant and conscious; its opposite is inferior and unconscious. The other two functions can be either conscious auxiliaries or unconscious inferiors. The dominant function has a characteristic attitude; the inferior takes the opposite attitude. Those are the basics – from here you can check out any of my other articles, which deal with many aspects of this schematic in greater depth. Enjoy!