Jungian cognitive functions
[2] The four psychological functions may be subjugated to the control of consciousness, which can take two attitudes: The difference between extraversion and introversion comes from the source of the decisive factor in forming motivation and developing ideas, whether it is objective (i.e., the external environment) or subjective (experienced within the mind, or "processes inherent in the psyche"[1]).
To summarize Jung's views, as discussed in Psychological Types and maintained until his death[citation needed], Jung posited that each individual follows a "general attitude of consciousness" where every conscious act is directed by the tendency to follow introversion for introverts and extraversion for extraverts.
Extraverted thinking often places information, such as facts in high order; it is a process that is concerned with organisation and hierarchy of phenomena.
The nature of introverted thinking means that it is primarily concerned with its "subjective idea" and insights gained by formulation over facts and objective data.
Darwin ranges over the wide fields of objective facts, while Kant restricts himself to a critique of knowledge in general.
"[2] Jung defined feeling as "primarily a process that takes place between the ego and a given content, a process, moreover, that imparts to the content a definite value in the sense of acceptance or rejection [...] Hence, feeling is also a kind of judging, differing, however, from an intellectual judgment in that it does not aim at establishing an intellectual connection but is solely concerned with the setting up of a subjective criterion of acceptance or rejection.
It makes people silent and difficult to access; it shrinks back like a violet from the brute nature of the object in order to fill the depths of the subject.
For example, since an extraverted sensor type's source of reward gravitates around perceiving and feeling external phenomena, he often has a good sense of aesthetics—whether this be the taste of food or a new trend in clothing.
[11] Intuition is also presented as a basic psychological function, as hunches and visions provide an alternative means of perception to sensation.
People with high extraverted intuition are attuned to current events, media, trends, and developments.
The collective unconscious sees the world in terms of primordial archetypes such as The Hero, The Sage, the outlaw, etc.
The collective conscious used by the Extraverted Intuitive, however, sees archetypes reflected through the subcultures, celebrities, organizations, events, and ideas of their times.
Jung wrote: "Intuition, in the introverted attitude, is directed upon the inner object, a term we might justly apply to the elements of the unconscious.
But, because intuition excludes the cooperation of sensation, it obtains either no knowledge at all or, at best, a very inadequate awareness of the innervation disturbances or of the physical effects produced by the unconscious images.
Individuals' personalities fall into sixteen different categories depending on which side of each dichotomy they belong to, labelled by the four applicable letters (for example, an "ENTP" type is someone whose preferences are extraversion, intuition, thinking and perceiving).
[12] Myers interpreted Jung as saying that the auxiliary, tertiary, and inferior functions are always in the opposite attitude of the dominant, though some views differ.
[13] In support of Myers' (and/or Briggs') interpretation[citation needed], in one sentence Jung seems to state that the "three inferior" functions of an (extreme) extravert are introverted.
"Unconscious" being in fact "conscious" makes a significant difference, given the importance of these two notions in psychological types.
The tables below give different theorists' ideas about personality types in terms of "cognitive functions".
Carl Jung developed the theory of cognitive processes in his book Psychological Types, in which he defined only four psychological functions, which can take introverted or extraverted attitudes, as well as a judging (rational) or perceiving (irrational) attitude determined by the primary function (judging if thinking or feeling, and perceiving if sensation or intuition).
[2] The less differentiation is hence strongly affected by the opposing attitude of the unconscious and manifest in "happening" to the person and not under conscious control.
[citation needed] The following table is a summarized model of Jung's conception of personality types based on the four functions of introversion, and extraversion.
[citation needed] Beebe describes the different cognitive functions' role in the overall personality in terms of various mythic archetypes.
[citation needed] John Beebe's model is based on Jung's theory of the collective unconscious, which is not part of the current scientific consensus and may be unfalsifiable.
In her book, Personality Type: An Owners Manual, Thomson advances the hypothesis of a modular relationship between the cognitive functions paralleling left-right brain lateralization.
The order of the cognitive functions are then determined not by an archetypal hierarchy (as supposed by Beebe) but by an innate brain lateralization preference.
