# The Bipolar Assumption of Jungian Functions



## Old Intern (Nov 20, 2012)

@reckful INFP = Fi>Ne>Si>Te . . . . is Se above^ a typo? - Se in there is not consistent with anything I can figure.



reckful said:


> Similarly, as Reynierse has also pointed out, the idea that certain types have one function as their "dominant" (and therefore more strong/significant/whatever as far as their personality characteristics are concerned) function and a different one as their "auxiliary" (so less strong/significant/whatever than the dominant) function has never been reflected in any respectable body of studies. Going all the way back to 1985, the second edition of the MBTI Manual noted that people didn't tend to get higher scores on their supposed "dominant" functions than their supposed "auxiliary" functions. Whether any particular INT guy is likely to exhibit more N-related influence on his personality or more T-related influence is likely to hinge on whether his *N preference* is stronger or his *T preference is stronger*, and _not_ on whether he's an INTJ (and therefore, supposedly, an N-dom) or an INTP (and therefore, supposedly, a T-dom).
> 
> And so on. Anytime any aspect of any "cognitive functions" model predicts something that goes beyond what you'd expect from just the simpler impacts of the relevant dichotomies _and dichotomy combinations_, the predicted function-related pattern fails to show up in any significant body of data — in stark contrast to the dichotomies, which have thousands of data pools with often-dramatic correlation patterns that support of their validity.


^interesting. It seems to me, from being around here, that Jungs 8 functions are very real but getting a handle on testing, and categorizing how functions play out in a hierarchy of internal priorites - has not been done well, yet.

I'm studying more on links and people you mention above, thanks.
Okay one thought about Si dom and Jung . . . . @_Abraxas_ helped me out quite a bit when I first came to PerC, to understand that Jung is using a style of writing that might even be its own art form. When you try to look at Jung's time and get used to his style (he has bad things to say about all of us) - you . . . . . well . . . . I can see why Te could see this as logically and scientifically problematic. Si link was a fun read to hear your reaction though.


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

Old Intern said:


> @reckful INFP = Fi>Ne>Si>Te . . . . is Se above^ a typo? - Se in there is not consistent with anything I can figure.


Not a typo.

In the spoiler in this post contains an unspoiled copy from Gifts Differing about Myers' reasoning on the attitude of the auxiliary.

Essentially, she based it off of these direct quotes from Jung:



> The relatively unconscious functions of feeling, intuition and sensation, which counterbalance introverted thinking, are inferior in quality and have a primitive, extraverted character.





> When the mechanism of extraversion predominates... the most highly differentiated function has a constantly extraverted application, while the inferior functions are found in the service of introversion.



Jung's position (though controversial) = XXYY
Myers' position = XYYY
Grant, Berens, Nardi, etc position = XYXY


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Old Intern said:


> @reckful INFP = Fi>Ne>Si>Te . . . . is Se above^ a typo? - Se in there is not consistent with anything I can figure.


As further discussed in this post, theorists disagree over what attitude Jung assigned to the auxiliary function — I think the idea that Jung thought the auxiliary function would have the _opposite attitude_ to the dominant is all but insupportable, and Myers acknowledged that that view ran counter to the majority (all but one, she said) of Jung scholars — but nobody respectable really disagrees with the idea that Jung thought that the attitude of the _tertiary_ function was _opposite_ to the attitude of the dominant function (in the typical case), and that was also Myers' view.

The INTJ=Ni-Te-Fi-Se functions model was apparently first formulated by good old Harold Grant in the appendix to a religious book (I am not making this up) called Image to Likeness: A Jungian Path in the Gospel Journey in 1983. And it never should have gotten any traction, but — thanks to shining lights like Linda Berens — you can find it all over teh internet today.

As previously noted, wiser MBTI theorists (like Naomi Quenk) have refrained from adopting Grant's view of the tertiary function, and it's never been endorsed by the official MBTI folks.

Most importantly, and also as previously noted, decades of MBTI data make it reasonably clear at this point that Grant's view of the tertiary function has _no freaking validity whatsoever_ — "validity" being psychometrics-speak for _corresponding with reality_.


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## Old Intern (Nov 20, 2012)

reckful said:


> As further discussed in this post, theorists disagree over what attitude Jung assigned to the auxiliary function — I think the idea that Jung thought the auxiliary function would have the _opposite attitude_ to the dominant is all but insupportable, and Myers acknowledged that that view ran counter to the majority (all but one, she said) of Jung scholars — but nobody respectable really disagrees with the idea that Jung thought that the attitude of the _tertiary_ function was _opposite_ to the attitude of the dominant function (in the typical case), and that was also Myers' view.
> 
> The INTJ=Ni-Te-Fi-Se functions model was apparently first formulated by good old Harold Grant in the appendix to a religious book (I am not making this up) called Image to Likeness: A Jungian Path in the Gospel Journey in 1983. And it never should have gotten any traction, but — thanks to shining lights like Linda Berens — you can find it all over teh internet today.
> 
> ...


Wow, But it makes such a pretty system. 
I mean I can see it in an ENTJ, INTJ, or My Dad Se>Fi>Te>Ni

The back and forth of Ni, Se for an ENTJ or two I've worked for . . . .or how even if I have low Fe on a test score - I know how I AM on a sales call with Fe as my back-up . . . it explains what I do. It makes sense that if you lead with Ne, you have times where it serves you well to be flexible about judging avenues. and how if you put all your bets on Te with heavy extroversion you better be vigilant about taking in your environment and watching your back so to speak.


all illusion? Seeing what we expect to see? 
Or it could be that what we (i) see IS really there, just hard to test for.


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## Old Intern (Nov 20, 2012)

@reckful as far as I knew *Jung* never attempted to define a tertiary. Someplace other than Psychological Types? Does this show up when he talks about complexes or something more involved?

My understanding of a third and fourth was it was derivative - based on the idea a person needs to have a comparison of opposites to orient him or her self in the world. OR Jungs idea that Dominant function may be about running away from something as much as being drawn toward a stance or perspective. ?


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Old Intern said:


> @reckful as far as I knew *Jung* never attempted to define a tertiary. Someplace other than Psychological Types? Does this show up when he talks about complexes or something more involved?
> 
> My understanding of a third and fourth was it was derivative - based on the idea a person needs to have a comparison of opposites to orient him or her self in the world. OR Jungs idea that Dominant function may be about running away from something as much as being drawn toward a stance or perspective. ?


No, Jung definitely talked about the tertiary function — and his view that, in the typical case, it would have the opposite attitude to the dominant — in both Psychological Types and in subsequent writings, and you can read more about that (with quotes from Jung) in this post.


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

Old Intern said:


> @reckful as far as I knew *Jung* never attempted to define a tertiary. Someplace other than Psychological Types? Does this show up when he talks about complexes or something more involved?
> 
> My understanding of a third and fourth was it was derivative - based on the idea a person needs to have a comparison of opposites to orient him or her self in the world. OR Jungs idea that Dominant function may be about running away from something as much as being drawn toward a stance or perspective. ?


According to Jung, what we call the tertiary is actually just another auxiliary--the Inferior function's auxiliary. For more info, look at the first spoiler here.


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## Old Intern (Nov 20, 2012)

@reckful I read your links and links off from links. I still don't see Jung describing or dealing at all with any tertiary function. To me he seems to lump whatever has not been differentiated into an unknown blob which could contain any or all 6 archetypes, everything but a conscious Dom and a conscious or emerging Aux. In other words the Dom and Aux, and maybe the antagonist to the Dom - are all that were considerable to him.

What it seems to me is that people (theories) are extrapolating ideas from his concept of an undiscovered unconscious that he only makes vague general statements about.

Anybody have a link to prove me wrong?


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## Old Intern (Nov 20, 2012)

PaladinX said:


> According to Jung, what we call the tertiary, is actually just another auxiliary--the Inferior function's auxiliary. For more info, look at the first spoiler here.


Okay but this still sounds like he is trying to work out how functions need to buffer each other or how consciousness needs to work out a compatibility scheme to not end up with unbearable inner turmoil for an individual. 

@PaladinX thank you for pointing out how Jung considered two aux functions. I don't see it being taken into any firm system according to his own writing (so far). Only what I said above. And I guess history shows this was debatable for experts.

Thanks everybody for being patient, about me not being aware of all I don't know 



(xyyy) INFP was/is? Fi, Ne, Se, Te - ENTP = Ne, Ti, Fi, Si ? please say it isn't so . . . . . .


INTJ was/is? Ni, Ti, Fe, Se ^I don't see a pattern here oh - this may have been Jungian original.
He thought of himself this way - well? . . . . . .
Okay what I see here is an evolution of thought.


Is MBTI dichotomy issue simply a testing system - or different letter/attitudes too?


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## reckful (Jun 19, 2012)

Old Intern said:


> @reckful I read your links and links off from links. I still don't see Jung describing or dealing at all with any tertiary function. To me he seems to lump whatever has not been differentiated into an unknown blob which could contain any or all 6 archetypes, everything but a conscious Dom and a conscious or emerging Aux. In other words the Dom and Aux, and maybe the antagonist to the Dom - are all that were considerable to him.
> 
> What it seems to me is that people (theories) are extrapolating ideas from his concept of an undiscovered unconscious that he only makes vague general statements about.
> 
> Anybody have a link to prove me wrong?


The second Jung quote in this post (which I linked to in the last post) has Jung explaining that a Ti-dom's three other functions (which includes the tertiary, obviously) are all extraverted.

And some people point to that quote in support of the idea that the Ti-dom's _auxiliary_ would be extraverted, too, and you'll find my longform discussion of that issue here. That scenario with the Ti-dom's _three_ other functions all extraverted was the "default" scenario in which those three other functions were also all _unconscious_. But Jung thought that, in the typical case, the second function ended up being differentiated and made mostly conscious, and two of the other Jung quotes in that first linked post describe how the typical person ended up with two conscious functions and two unconscious functions.

So... there's some disagreement over whether Jung thought a Ti-dom with an N-aux would have an Ni-aux (the majority view) or Ne-aux, but I've never read any respectable source that disagreed with the idea that Jung thought that their tertiary function (in the typical case) would be Se.

And the reason you can be confident Jung thought Se (rather than Fe) would be the Ti-dom's tertiary (and Fe would be the inferior) is that Jung made it abundantly clear (he describes it in almost all, if not all, of his eight separate type portraits) that the inferior function was the opposite of the dominant function (so Fe for a Ti-dom).


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## Old Intern (Nov 20, 2012)

_The counterbalancing functions of feeling, intuition, and sensation are comparatively unconscious and inferior, and therefore have a primitive extraverted character that accounts for all the troublesome influences from outside to which the introverted thinker is prone.

_Okay I didn't take this as a worked out piece of theory but more like a general statement about unconscious forces. But I see what you mean about seeming to imply XYYY. We assume someone leading with an extroverted function has three primitive, comparatively unconscious introverted functions? He thought of himself as XXYY. - eventually - by becoming more conscious the first aux. would be integrated into his preferred attitude? 

Shifted in order, they come out to what we call INFJ today - which sounds applicable to me.

In a thread long time ago I got into how Jung's ideas about Fe would be distorted because he got his examples from women before we even had the right to vote. - A woman's whole world or the only thing she had any control over was social status management, so Jung was limited in his interpretation or what he could infer. Of Course he would not want to see an extroverted awareness/ engagement with people to be foundational for his own sense of self.

ooookay time for me to call it a night, @_reckful_ thanks again


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

First of all, one's consciousness is habitually turned outward at the _a posteriori_ world, or inward at the _a priori_ foundations of the psyche (Jung's archetypes/Kant's transcendentals). Second, one differentiates one function habitually more than the others, so that one spends the most time in consciousness. However, a person can differentiate any or none of their functions at will, so again it comes down to a matter of habit that we say a function has whatever attitude.

TL;DR: the attitudes of the functions are not important. They are not static. A function just has whatever attitude corresponds to it's habitual differentiation. If I tend to be _more_ conscious of a function _more often_ than I am unconscious of it, then that means it is mostly differentiated in my consciousness, and so you'd say it had the same attitude _most of the time_.

People don't seem to realize that the functions only have attitudes because they inherit those attitudes from consciousness and the unconscious. So their attitude just depends on how well differentiated they are. Early in life, I only have my dominant function differentiated very well, and I see the world through the lens of that function alone. In my early adulthood I start to form a stronger grasp of my first auxiliary and I differentiate that one to some extent, so it inherits the attitude of my consciousness whenever I am conscious of it. Later in life I might differentiate my tertiary function as well, and then even later I will begin to grapple with my inferior (although, Jung believed a person could never truly differentiate their inferior function above the threshold of the sub-conscious which Marie-Louise Von Franz calls the "middle realm".)

So it starts like this: XYYY; it becomes this: XXYY; later on it might become this: XXXY; and it will never be this: XXXX because there must be some balance in the psyche.

Jung didn't perceive the psyche as a static thing that never changed. Rather, people differentiate functions at will. When he speaks of a "type" he is talking about habits. People habitually choose to differentiate certain functions over time and across circumstances because their ego-complex more easily directs the flow of psychic libido through one or several functions. Jung also didn't consider type to be very important either, and I agree that types don't really matter. Even the labels of the functions, he argued, aren't important or all that scientific. He states in his Tavistock lectures that these labels are only a useful kind of language for getting the gist of it across; he gives the example of having to explain all of this to a wife who is having fights with her husband, to help her understand him better.

To that extent, systems like the MBTI dichotomies, or the Big 5 might be more precise because they're more empirical. But Jung would probably argue that those models are unnecessarily precise, because they don't need to be that accurate. Accuracy is just missing the point; the purpose of the system is to just get the person to subjectively grasp what it is that's going on so they feel motivated to do something about it. To that extent I prefer Jung's models because they leave room open for personal interpretation, which allows you to express yourself unconsciously through the system, rather than obey a set of rules dictated by objective facts that force the unconscious to conform with sensation and logic. And that means a person is more likely to project themselves into the system and identify with it strongly, thus feeling more inspired by it.


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## Old Intern (Nov 20, 2012)

What Happens To Your Brain When You're Having A Brilliant Idea | Fast Company | Business + Innovation

Ni doms might like this most^ (the Ni-Se thing). I can't BE here today but I thought this soooo tied into the OP, couldn't resist.


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## brightflashes (Oct 27, 2015)

Both the MBTI and the GW assumed bi-polar relationships between Jung’s concepts, something not consistently supported by June Singer’s many years of clinical observations. Rather than simply assuming their reservations were correct and that a new Jungian based inventory needed to be created, June Singer and Mary Loomis decided to conduct an empirical experiment.

Does the bi-polar forced-choice structure create results that would not be supported if the concepts were allowed to vary independently? Would the Dominant Type Function remain the Dominant and the Inferior Type Function the Inferior?

https://movingboundaries.com/core/history-of-sl-tdi/


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