Psychological Types
Carl Jung's foundational theory of personality categorizing people by their dominant mental functions and attitudes, forming the basis for modern personality assessments like MBTI.
Also known as: Jungian Types, Jungian Typology, Jung's Types
Category: Psychology & Mental Models
Tags: personality, psychology, jung, self-awareness, theories, history
Explanation
Psychological Types is Carl Jung's seminal 1921 work that introduced the concepts of introversion, extraversion, and the cognitive functions. This framework became the foundation for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and influenced virtually all subsequent personality psychology.
**Jung's Core Framework:**
**Two Attitudes:**
- **Extraversion**: Psychic energy directed outward toward the external world of people, objects, and events.
- **Introversion**: Psychic energy directed inward toward the subjective world of thoughts, feelings, and reflections.
**Four Functions:**
Jung identified four basic psychological functions through which we experience the world:
- **Thinking**: Logical analysis and objective evaluation
- **Feeling**: Value judgments based on subjective worth
- **Sensation**: Perception through the five senses
- **Intuition**: Perception of possibilities and meanings beyond the immediate
Jung grouped these into:
- **Rational functions** (Thinking and Feeling): How we judge and make decisions
- **Irrational functions** (Sensation and Intuition): How we perceive information
**Type Development:**
Each person has a dominant function (most developed), auxiliary function (supporting), and inferior function (least developed, often unconscious). Psychological health involves developing all functions while honoring one's natural dominant function.
**Key insights:**
- No type is better than another—each has strengths and blind spots
- People of opposite types often misunderstand each other
- The inferior function is the gateway to the unconscious and personal growth
- Type is about preferences, not abilities—anyone can develop any function
Jung's work emphasizes that understanding psychological types fosters self-awareness and tolerance for different ways of being in the world.
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