# Can the Dominant and Auxiliary Functions be Both Introverted or Extroverted?



## The Madman (Feb 20, 2013)

Can an individual have two introverted or two extroverted functions as their dominant and auxiliary functions without having a cognitive disorder?
For example, can a stable and moderately psychologically healthy Ni-Fi or Se-Te type exist?

This question arises from some reading I have done, mainly on Personality Cafe. MBTI maintains that the dominant and auxiliary functions cannot be both introverted or extroverted, but then I read that Jung stated that his dominant and auxiliary functions were Ti and Ni. I cannot remember or find the topic which discusses this, but I remember a post about connecting dominant-tertiary loops and personality disorders, and another post arguing that this is inaccurate. 

Thank you.


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

When Myers declared that the auxiliary function's attitude would be the opposite of the attitude of the dominant function (e.g., Ni-Te for INTJs), she acknowledged that that interpretation put her in the minority of Jung scholars. I think it was a mistake, although it wasn't really a very significant "mistake" from Myers' perspective since, although she gave the functions quite a lot of lip service in the first half of Gifts Differing, she then essentially left them behind in favor of the dichotomies (to her credit, IMHO).

I think the interpretation that's really most consistent with Psychological Types as a whole (as distinguished from Myers' very selective cherry-picking in that respect) is that Jung's function model for an Ni-dom with a T auxiliary was really Ni-Ti-Fe-Se — with Te being an Ni-dom's default, unconscious form of T and Ti being the form that T would take to the extent that an Ni-dom differentiated it and brought it into conscious, directed use as the auxiliary function. (Consistent with that, I think Jung, at the time he wrote Psychological Types, basically viewed himself as Ti-Ni-Se-Fe). And again, and as Myers acknowledged, this is apparently the _majority view_ among Jung scholars.

For a little more from me, see this post; and, for a thread on the subject, see here.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

edit: I see that @reckful already answered the question but I'll post anyway. 

It depends on who you ask. You are correct Myers makes the assumption that the aux must be the opposite attitude, but I personally think that is a slight misreading of Jung. Jung seems to imply that the auxes and other functions would be the opposite attitude, if they were unconscious and thus carried the repressed attitude of the unconscious (introversion for an extravert). But the more conscious a function was the more it should take on the conscious attitude, so an extravert should have two extraverted functions as his top two. It would make no sense, in Jung's theory to have an introverted first function and extraverted second function. This idea in some ways undermines the spirit of what Jung was trying to get at (the tensions between conscious vs. unconscious not the relationship of dom-aux which is more the MBTI way of seeing things). 

So in short yes, you probably can have Ti-Ni as your two top functions according to Jung and moreover that would probably be more often the case. I should point out though that Jung seemed to think there was a third category of people who did not have differentiated attitudes. This doesn't mean they were ambiverts or had Ti and Te, but rather their functions existed in something of an archaic state. 

One of the reasons dom-tert loops are faulty is because its built on the assumption that the third function must be the same as the dominant, which now really doesn't make sense if we look at it from Jung's point of view. That's a long topic to get into, but suffice to say even in many MBTI circles this isn't accepted as gospel. You might just as easily find someone who argues their middle function to be the same attitude as the inferior, and of course this would align more with how Jung seemed to think things worked. I should point out though that for the sake of this argument I'm vastly oversimplifying.


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

@_reckful_, @_LiquidLight_

Jung also stated that the auxiliary function was relatively unconscious and subservient to the dominant function. If a function is in the conscious attitude, then it should be differentiated and operating under its own principle. With this understanding, one could surmise that the auxiliary remains in the unconscious attitude. No?


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

PaladinX said:


> @_reckful_, @_LiquidLight_
> 
> Jung also stated that the auxiliary function was relatively unconscious and subservient to the dominant function. If a function is in the conscious attitude, then it should be differentiated and operating under its own principle. With this understanding, one could surmise that the auxiliary remains in the unconscious attitude. No?


No. Jung described the auxiliary function as "less differentiated" than the dominant function (and of "secondary importance") but he described the auxiliary as being "present in consciousness and exert[ing] a co-determining influence."

The fact that the auxiliary was "less differentiated" (and "relatively unconscious") means that it would be _partly_ unconscious, but it would be the conscious, differentiated part that served as the auxiliary. Jung said that was why it had to be a different kind of function from the dominant function — i.e., a perceiving function if the dominant was a judging function. Jung thought it was the norm for a dominant judging function to face opposition from the other judging function _from the unconscious_. But Jung thought that the opposite judging function couldn't really co-exist with the dominant function _in consciousness_ — so the auxiliary needed to be a perceiving function precisely because it was (to the extent that it served as the auxiliary) a second _conscious_ function.

Here's Jung (with bolding by me):

Closer investigation shows with great regularity that, besides the most differentiated function, another, less differentiated function of secondary importance is invariably *present in consciousness* and exerts a co-determining influence.

To recapitulate for the sake of clarity: the products of all functions can be conscious, but we speak of the "consciousness" of a function only when its use is under the control of the will and, at the same time, its governing principle is the decisive one for the orientation of consciousness. ... This absolute sovereignty always belongs, empirically, to one function alone, and _can_ belong only to one function, because the equally independent intervention of another function would necessarily produce a different orientation which, partially at least, would contradict the first. But since it is a vital condition for the conscious process of adaptation always to have clear and unambiguous aims, the presence of a second function of equal power is naturally ruled out. This other function, therefore, can have only a secondary importance, as has been found to be the case in practice. Its secondary importance is due to the fact that it is not, like the primary function, valid in its own right as an absolutely reliable and decisive factor, but comes into play more as an auxiliary or complementary function. Naturally only those functions can appear as auxiliary whose nature is not opposed to the dominant function. For instance, feeling can never act as the second function alongside thinking, because it is by its very nature too strongly opposed to thinking. ...

Experience shows that the secondary function is always one whose nature is different from, though not antagonistic to, the primary function. Thus, thinking as the primary function can readily pair with intuition as the auxiliary, or indeed equally well with sensation, but, as already observed, never with feeling. ...

For all the types met with in practice, the rule holds good that besides the conscious, primary function there is a relatively unconscious, auxiliary function which is in every respect different from the nature of the primary function. The resulting combinations present the familiar picture of, for instance, practical thinking allied with sensation, speculative thinking forging ahead with intuition, artistic intuition selecting and presenting its images with the help of feeling-values, philosophical intuition systematizing its vision into comprehensible thought by means of a powerful intellect, and so on.

The unconscious functions likewise group themselves in patterns correlated with *the conscious ones*. Thus, the correlative of conscious, practical thinking may be an unconscious, intuitive-feeling attitude, with feeling under a stronger inhibition than intuition.​


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

reckful said:


> Closer investigation shows with great regularity that, besides the most differentiated function, another, less differentiated function of secondary importance is invariably *present in consciousness* and exerts a co-determining influence.
> 
> To recapitulate for the sake of clarity: the products of all functions can be conscious, but we speak of the "consciousness" of a function only when its use is under the control of the will and, at the same time, its governing principle is the decisive one for the orientation of consciousness. ... This absolute sovereignty always belongs, empirically, to one function alone, and _can_ belong only to one function, because the equally independent intervention of another function would necessarily produce a different orientation which, partially at least, would contradict the first. ... This other function, therefore, can have only a secondary importance, as has been found to be the case in practice. Its secondary importance is due to the fact that it is not, like the primary function, valid in its own right as an absolutely reliable and decisive factor, but comes into play more as an auxiliary or complementary function. Naturally only those functions can appear as auxiliary whose nature is not opposed to the dominant function. For instance, feeling can never act as the second function alongside thinking, because it is by its very nature too strongly opposed to thinking. ...
> 
> ...


I respectfully disagree. I believe that he is using the word "consciousness" in different contexts. I interpret the first, which you have bolded, to mean that the auxiliary manifests itself into awareness so that you can recognize it's existence, but cannot control it and is not being repressed. The second paragraph illustrates another context, in which he means to use "consciousness" as a label for that which exists in awareness and can be controlled by the will, while operating under its own principle. The third, which you have also bolded, is similar in meaning to the first, except that it is being used as an adjective to distinguish "the conscious ones" from the repressed functions.

There is also this line: 

"For all the types appearing in practice, the principle holds good that besides the conscious main function there is also a *relatively unconscious*, auxiliary function which is in every respect different from the nature of the main function."

Here he mentions the relative unconsciousness of the function and is in every respect different (though the latter is arguable as to whether he meant just different in nature (P vs J) or if he intended to include attitude as well (E vs I).


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

@PaladinX —

There's quite a bit in Jung that I think reasonable people can disagree about, but I really don't think this is one of those cases. Jung specifically says that the second function is "present in consciousness and exerts a co-determining influence" and he closes by explaining that the other two "unconscious functions" group themselves into a cooperative pair just like the two "conscious ones."

I don't think it makes sense to interpret Jung to be using "consciousness" in two different ways in his auxiliary-function discussion. And I also don't think it makes sense to think Jung would be saying that the subject was "aware" of the auxiliary function ("so that you can recognize its existence") but not "aware" of the third and fourth functions. As I describe in this post, Jung thought that, for a typical person on a typical day, something like half of their thoughts, speech and behavior might be the product of their unconscious functions, and Jung said it was sometimes hard to tell the consciously-sourced stuff from the unconsciously-sourced stuff. Jung noted that a person might well experience at least some of the unconscious-sourced stuff more as something that "happened to them," but it's not that the subject wasn't conscious of that stuff in the simple sense of just being "aware" of it.

More importantly, Jung specifically says that the auxiliary function "exerts a co-determining influence," which seems substantially inconsistent with your idea that it's "conscious" only to the limited extent that "you can recognize its existence, but cannot control it." If the auxiliary function "exerts a co-determining influence" that doesn't involve the subject's "control" of it, then how is it any different from the third and fourth functions, which also exert a "determining influence" by that standard?

Here's some of the stuff I left out of the quotation in my first post:



Jung said:


> Neither intuition nor sensation is antagonistic to thinking; they need not be absolutely excluded, for they are not of a nature equal and opposite to thinking, as feeling is — which, as a judging function, successfully competes with thinking — but are functions of perception, affording welcome assistance to thought. But as soon as they reached the same level of differentiation as thinking, they would bring about a change of attitude which would contradict the whole trend of thinking. They would change the judging attitude into a perceiving one; whereupon the principle of rationality indispensable to thought would be suppressed in favour of the irrationality of perception. Hence the auxiliary function is possible and useful only in so far as it _serves_ the dominant function, without making any claim to the autonomy of its own principle.


If the auxiliary function is outside the subject's conscious "control," how is it going to be able to usefully "serve" the dominant function? Also note that Jung talks about the auxiliary function not being able to "reach the same level of differentiation" as the dominant without causing a change of type — but the auxiliary is nonetheless "differentiated" to a significant degree and, in his Differentiation definition, Jung explains that an "undifferentiated" function is one that remains fused with the other unconscious functions and is plagued by "ambivalence" and incapable of having a "direction" toward a goal. "Differentiation" of a function, for Jung, was basically synonymous with the process of bringing it up into consciousness to the extent that it could be _directed_, and that involved more than just "awareness."

The phrase "relatively unconscious" means "relative" to the dominant function — i.e., not as differentiated (and hence more unconscious) than the dominant function.

I'll be curious to see if anybody else favors your interpretation. As you know, Myers acknowledged that the majority of Jung scholars (all but one, by her count) thought that the auxiliary function would have the same attitude as the dominant function. So Myers was the theorist primarily responsible for the relatively popular modern perspective that expects the dominant to have the opposite attitude — and Myers certainly viewed the auxiliary function as a conscious function. To the extent that your perspective combines the view that the auxiliary function will have the _opposite_ attitude with the view that the auxiliary function will be essentially _unconscious_, I think that combination may make you a school of one. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...)


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

@PaladinX —

As a follow-up: Tell me what you think of the following quotations, which come from _Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy_ (1952):



Jung said:


> If we think of the psychological functions as arranged in a circle, then the most differentiated function is usually the carrier of the ego and, equally regularly, has an auxiliary function attached to it. The "inferior" function, on the other hand, is unconscious and for that reason is projected into a non-ego. It too has an auxiliary function.





Jung said:


> In the psychology of the functions there are two conscious and therefore masculine functions, the differentiated function and its auxiliary, which are represented in dreams by, say, father and son, whereas the unconscious functions appear as mother and daughter. Since the conflict between the two auxiliary functions is not nearly as great as that between the differentiated and the inferior function, it is possible for the third function — that is, the unconscious auxiliary one — to be raised to consciousness and thus made masculine. It will, however, bring with it traces of its contamination with the inferior function, thus acting as a kind of link with the darkness of the unconscious.


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

reckful said:


> There's quite a bit in Jung that I think reasonable people can disagree about, but I really don't think this is one of those cases. Jung specifically says that the second function is "present in consciousness and exerts a co-determining influence" and he closes by explaining that the other two "unconscious functions" group themselves into a cooperative pair just like the two "conscious ones."


To me, it sounds like you are inferring after abstracting from context. The whole second paragraph that you quoted earlier, defines what a conscious function is and that the auxiliary does not meet all of that criteria.



reckful said:


> I don't think it makes sense to interpret Jung to be using "consciousness" in two different ways in his auxiliary-function discussion.


Why not? It's quite possible. I am assuming, that you are making an assumption that Jung wouldn't do that. I am not making any such assumptions. I am going by what is literally there and how I see it in the context with which the words are being used. In any case, why quote the second usage and not the first?



reckful said:


> And I also don't think it makes sense to think Jung would be saying that the subject was "aware" of the auxiliary function ("so that you can recognize its existence") but not "aware" of the third and fourth functions. As I describe in this post, Jung thought that, for a typical person on a typical day, something like half of their thoughts, speech and behavior might be the product of their unconscious functions, and Jung said it was sometimes hard to tell the consciously-sourced stuff from the unconsciously-sourced stuff. Jung noted that a person might well experience at least some of the unconscious-sourced stuff more as something that "happened to them," but it's not that the subject wasn't conscious of that stuff in the simple sense of just being "aware" of it.


I may not be using the right words to convey my meaning. It's not so much as an awareness of the function as it is a difference between the active use of the dominant function and the passive use of the auxiliary. The third and fourth functions are repressed.



reckful said:


> More importantly, Jung specifically says that the auxiliary function "exerts a co-determining influence," which seems substantially inconsistent with your idea that it's "conscious" only to the limited extent that "you can recognize its existence, but cannot control it." If the auxiliary function "exerts a co-determining influence" that doesn't involve the subject's "control" of it, then how is it any different from the third and fourth functions, which also exert a "determining influence" by that standard?


I interpret it as being like being a flavor or accent. Like S vs N is to Ti in IxTP. It exerts an influence because it is pushing out from unconsciousness, but is still not under the control of the will.




reckful said:


> If the auxiliary function is outside the subject's conscious "control," how is it going to be able to usefully "serve" the dominant function? Also note that Jung talks about the auxiliary function not being able to "reach the same level of differentiation" as the dominant without causing a change of type — but the auxiliary is nonetheless "differentiated" to a significant degree and, in his Differentiation definition, Jung explains that an "undifferentiated" function is one that remains fused with the other unconscious functions and is plagued by "ambivalence" and incapable of having a "direction" toward a goal. "Differentiation" of a function, for Jung, was basically synonymous with the process of bringing it up into consciousness to the extent that it could be _directed_, and that involved more than just "awareness."


I am unsure how to explain it in verbal terms; however, I think Myers aptly described it as a balancing function, or counterweight.



reckful said:


> The phrase "relatively unconscious" means "relative" to the dominant function — i.e., not as differentiated (and hence more unconscious) than the dominant function.


How is it that you accept only one contextual meaning for "consciousness" but you accept two contextual meanings for "unconscious"?



Do you believe that you use Ti over Te? To me, Se makes more sense as a secondary function than Si.

Also, I am not opposed to the idea of the auxiliary being in the same attitude as the dominant; however Myers' and my own reasoning makes more sense to me at this time. I also have a hard time accepting that, as an example, an ENFJ and an ENFP would be essentially the same (FeNe vs NeFe)

EDIT: As for your second post, I need to see the full text. I cannot interpret appropriately by snippets potentially taken out of context.


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## chaoticbrain (May 5, 2012)

Hmm I'm curious, if the 4 function model is not part of jung's work then did socionics copy MBTI with it's functions ?


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

PaladinX said:


> Do you believe that you use Ti over Te? To me, Se makes more sense as a secondary function than Si.


As I noted in my first post in the thread (and as further explained here), I don't really think in terms of the functions. Myers paid some lip service to the functions but basically left them behind, and I think she was right to do that.


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## bearotter (Aug 10, 2012)

Regarding OP, yes and no -- I don't think Jung's version of the functions aligns with MBTI's exactly, nor are the theories constructed with the same goals more than perhaps very generally speaking {how much so or not is up to those who are better read in both}. MBTI is one of a few ways of assigning a "functional" meaning to type with at minimum inspiration drawn from Jung, and we see different theories that attempt such functional meanings to afford potentially different contributions.

Nor do I think everyone has a good fit of "type" as per every system. It is possible, but not necessarily there. 

Whence, if one really wants an answer to the OP for one's own type, the necessary step is to examine what the systems are describing in truth. This then sheds the necessary light on whether one fits the needs better, or whether both/all fit the needs in different capacities.


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