# Question about this quote from Carl Jung



## Dastan (Sep 28, 2011)

From the definitions part of _psychological types_ by C.G. Jung:



> 22. Function: By psychological function I understand a certain form of psychic activity that remains theoretically the same under varying circumstances. From the energic standpoint a function is a phenomenal form of libido (_q.v.)_ which theoretically remains constant, in much the same way as physical force can be considered as the form or momentary manifestation of physical energy. I distinguish four basic functions in all, two rational and two irrational -- viz. _thinking_ and _feeling, sensation_ and _intuition_. I can give no a priori reason for selecting just these four as basic functions; I can only point to the fact that this conception has shaped itself out of many years' experience.
> 
> *I differentiate these functions from one another, because they are neither mutually relatable nor mutually reducible. The principle of thinking, for instance, is absolutely different from the principle of feeling, and so forth*. I make a capital distinction between this concept of function and phantasy-activity, or reverie, because, to my mind, phantasying is a peculiar form of activity which can manifest itself in all the four functions.
> 
> In my view, both will and attention are entirely secondary psychic phenomena.​


Referring to the bold part, I wonder if that indicates that he means that *everything else* is indeed *relatable* and *reducible* to the four functions then? Like every single psychic activity is considered to be part of the functions from Jungs percpective?


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

No he's just saying that the four functions have to be such because they don't relate to one another and do not reduce one another. They can't cancel each other out. Thinking cannot replace feeling, sensation cannot replace intuition, they each stand on their own conceptually. 

The analogy I would use is primary colors. Red, Blue and Yellow cannot cancel each other out, they each stand on their own. All other colors can be created from these primary three, so green can be reduced to Blue and Yellow, but blue and yellow cannot be similarly reduced. Its the same concept with the four functions. They exist conceptually as the foundations. Originally Jung tried to have a more reduced system as he alludes to at the beginning of the chapter but then decided after more insight that a fourfold, mandala-like scheme was probably a better way of looking at things.


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## Dastan (Sep 28, 2011)

Do you mean "no" like this is not the statement of this quote or do you mean you generally don't believe that Jung considers all psychic things to be reducible and relatabe to the functions?

I am not asking what the content of this quote is, but I am asking what it could indicate about how Jung thought to interrelate the four functions with all psychic phenomena or phenomena of the consiousness in general.

What do you guess could be kinds of psychic phenomena that Jung would not reduce and relate to the functions?


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## Dastan (Sep 28, 2011)

* To use your analogy, you mean that Jung considered all colors to be reducible to the primary colors? Or that there are also other colores that aren't?


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## surgery (Apr 16, 2010)

Dastan said:


> Do you mean "no" like this is not the statement of this quote or do you mean you generally don't believe that Jung considers all psychic things to be reducible and relatabe to the functions?
> 
> I am not asking what the content of this quote is, but I am asking what it could indicate about how Jung thought to interrelate the four functions with all psychic phenomena or phenomena of the consiousness in general.
> 
> What do you guess could be kinds of psychic phenomena that Jung would not reduce and relate to the functions?


I don't want to speak for @LiquidLight but, from what I can deduce from the Jung quotation and LiquidLight's answer is that his "no" was in reference to your question: "Like every single psychic activity is considered to be part of the functions from Jungs perceptive?"

I would have to agree with LL. No, Jung doesn't mean to say that all psychic activity is part of the functions. For example, he states: "I make a capital distinction between this concept of function and phantasy-activity, or reverie, because, to my mind, *phantasying is a peculiar form of activity which can manifest itself in all the four functions*."

So, essentially the ability to "phantasize", or I guess, use imagination is not dependent on any of the functions. Since none of the functions can "replace" another, yet imagination can manifest itself in any of the functions, it could also be said that imagination is a psychic activity that separated from the functions. That's how I interpret that. You could make a case that imagination is not independent of the functions, though: that imagination will only manifest _*in terms of *_either Sensing or Thinking or Feeling. I honestly don't have a counter argument because I haven't read enough Jung. 

That being said, from my own experience, I would say that emotions are a psychic phenomenon since they occur in the brain, yet they are not related to the functions. For example, empathy is supposedly derives from mirror neurons but the_ information_ that the experience of empathy provides _in relation to decision making/evaluating information_ is related to Judgment functions. But, empathy should not be _*reduced*_ in this case to, say, Feeling. There are also instinctual behaviors and sexual arousal. One could argue that these are not really "psychic", though. I guess it just depends on one's definition.


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## LiquidLight (Oct 14, 2011)

No Jung did not think all psychic phenomenon could be reduced down to the functions. Rather the functions were simply 'functions' of the ego.

In order to have ego-awareness or self-perception you have to be able to both perceive AND judge the world around you, and yourself (introversion/extraversion). You cannot have self-perception if you are not aware of who you are on the inside relative to the world around you. A person who was only extraverted, for instance would have little to no sense of self. Sort of like a household pet who only knows what happens to him, but has no real sense of its own motivations. But that's not to say the person would have no inner motivations, emotions, feelings, or whatever, just that they would always be related to something external and never back to the self. Thus the need to be able to introvert. A person who only was introverted would have to real sense of objectivity, everything would appear to be 'the world as I see it,' everything is always related back to the subjective experience. Thus you have to have both in order to be ego-aware (who you know yourself to be). The functions are the ego's way of accomplishing its goals.

For example if you are motivated to do something, lets say by a car, the ego might employ your dominant function to sort of act as a perspective or filter - way of thinking about it. The Te type might for example look at it from the standpoint of price, or money saved. The Feeling type might consider the beauty or elegance or how it makes them or other people feel and so forth (obviously that's a bad example, but what I'm trying to say is that functions don't necessarily predict behavior but rather more likely color behavior in a certain way. You're not motivated to do something necessarily because of the functions, but when you do something, the functions will color the way in which you go about it - a thinking type will take a thinking approach, a sensation type will take a sensation approach, and so on). 

All psychic phenomenon doesn't get reduced down to the functions (though in fairness the functions probably interpret psychic phenomenon, so it might appear that way). To believe everything reduces to functions is to basically say that ego is the center of your psyche, which of course is absolutely wrong in Analytical Psychology. That would be ego inflation, where 'who I know myself to be' gets mistaken for 'all that I am.' There is more to you than you are aware of (shadow or the unconscious parts). Ego is only the conscious part which, to Jung represented a small portion of the overall psyche. There was the Self, the complexes, memories, affects, emotions, etc. -- all things that exist apart from the ego but have just as much influence over the sum total of your psychological makeup as your ego and its way of functioning. But because the ego is the conscious part, there is a tendency for the unaware person to think who he sees himself to be is all there is, and thus a real tendency to interpret everything that happens through the lens of the four functions (so memories, affects, emotions, etc., get looked at through the ego's preferred method, lets say Thinking, which makes things a bit more complex. Sometimes you'd need another person to help convince you that your way of looking at things was just 'your way' of looking at things. That was the underlying reason for writing Psychological Types in the first place).

If you look at this chart I think it helps explain Jung's psyche a little better. To Jung the functions sit squarely within the ego and aren't even represented on this chart.


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## Dastan (Sep 28, 2011)

Really informative, thank you!


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## adam smith (Sep 22, 2010)

Dastan said:


> * To use your analogy, you mean that Jung considered all colors to be reducible to the primary colors? Or that there are also other colores that aren't?


I dont think Jung thought that every psychic activity could be reduced to functions or channels of libido flow. I think the functions only describe the activities in the conscious and personal unconscious. I think other psychic activities that are unexplainable by the functions are sourced from the collective unconscious. For example, love.



> At this point the fact forces itself on my attention that beside the field of reflection there is another equally broad if not broader area in which rational understanding and rational modes of representation find scarcely anything they are able to grasp. This is the realm of Eros. In classical times, when such things were properly understood, Eros was considered a god whose divinity transcended our human limits, and who therefore could be neither comprehended nor represented in any way. I might, as many before me have attempted to do, venture an approach to this daimon, whose range of activity extends from the endless spaces of the heavens to the dark abysses of hell; but I falter before the task of finding the language which might adequately express the incalculable paradoxes of love.
> 
> Eros is a kosmogonos, a creator and father-mother of all higher consciousness. I sometimes feel that Paul’s words—“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love”—might be the first condition of all cognition and the quintessence of divinity itself. Whatever the learned interpretation of the sentence “God is love,” the words affirm the complexio oppositorum of the Godhead. In my medical experience as well as in my own life I have again and again been faced with the mystery of love, and have never been able to explain what it is. Like Job, I had to “lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer.” (Job 40:4f)
> 
> ...


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## adam smith (Sep 22, 2010)

LiquidLight said:


> No Jung did not think all psychic phenomenon could be reduced down to the functions. Rather the functions were simply 'functions' of the ego.....


ahh, you beat me to it. good job =]


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

I wouldn't say the following quote provides anything like a definitive or complete answer to the question but, for what it's worth, in 1928 Jung wrote:



Jung said:


> I have often been asked, almost accusingly, why I speak of four functions and not of more or fewer. That there are exactly four was a result I arrived at on purely empirical grounds. But as the following consideration will show, *these four together produce a kind of totality*. Sensation establishes what is actually present, thinking enables us to recognize its meaning, feeling tells us its value, and intuition points to possibilities as to whence it came and whither it is going in a given situation. *In this way we can orient ourselves with respect to the immediate world as completely as when we locate a place geographically by latitude and longitude*.


I disagree with the suggestion in some of the earlier posts that Jung pretty much just viewed the functions as components of a person's conscious ego. In Psychological Types, Jung repeatedly describes the functions as having a large role to play in terms of a person's unconscious. Jung described the function that was the opposite of the dominant function as dominating a typical person's unconscious side just as the dominant function dominated the person's conscious side. (For a few quotes along those lines, see this post.)


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