# Dominant/Inferior and Neurosis



## gambit (Jun 24, 2010)

I've been wondering how to describe these in Jungian terms. So far I have

Process of Dominant function neurosis (or recouping of dominant failure through the inferior)
Ni -> type suffers -> Se breaks out of that
Ti -> type humiliated -> Fe breaks out of that

What about the others? And there's really no need for anything too complicated. Basically, if you identify strongly with a particular dominant function and have encountered a neurosis of your dominant function, explain how you used your inferior to break out of that, similar to what I've done. I would also like to hear from people that think they have a good understanding of the Jungian dominant/inferior relationship to explain the others, if no one feels confident to share the former.

I'm Ni dominant, by the way.

(And I guess maybe I should have made an introduction post, but this can serve a telling introduction of who I am in place)


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## StandingTiger (Dec 25, 2010)

Could you elaborate? I'm not sure of your point or in what direction you'd like this thread to go.


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## gambit (Jun 24, 2010)

I'm looking for ways that the inferior becomes necessary for the dominant ego. The way Jung seems to put it is that a person spends a great deal of effort and time in their dominant function at the cost of their inferior conjugate. When the inferior is used, the dominant is 'relieved of duty' so to speak. For this to happen a person's most comfortable dominant function has to have _failed_ in some way to want to utilize something weak like the inferior (which is the next closest function to the dominant out of all the other functions), which also explains why these inferiors are considered weak and hard to develop (and perhaps never really get that strong compared to the dominant even with much age).

My experience has been that Ni-dominants get an idea or vision of how something is or is going to be. But when they are wrong, all that time spent utilizing their Ni cognitive process resulted in failure and it becomes a neurosis because of this. You could think of it as an evolutionary process where maladaptive behavior is formed instead of adaptive. So to relieve this the person unconsciously utilizes the inferior in an attempt to go against the maladaptive behavior. This goes for all the types (or it's supposed to anyway).

So I'm trying to understand the big picture of how these things unfold. A Ti-dominant told me it is more a feeling of humility in their Ti being wrong that they develop Fe-inferior. Fe allows them to reconcile with people what Ti couldn't or instead produced. I feel as an Ni-dominant that when Ni fails it is more a feeling of misunderstanding or misreading a situation that leads to a feeling of suffering because of it. Se then allows me to just accept things as they are and do my best to deal with a situation in the moment.


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## gambit (Jun 24, 2010)

So theoretically, you have Ne/Si. So I imagine it might be something like Ne fails to understand how things are connected together and instead takes solace in what is familiar (Si). If you feel this is true, how would you describe this process?


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## StandingTiger (Dec 25, 2010)

gambit said:


> So theoretically, you have Ne/Si. So I imagine it might be something like Ne fails to understand how things are connected together and instead takes solace in what is familiar (Si). If you feel this is true, how would you describe this process?


That makes sense. Ideas, ideas, ideas take a back seat to to what is comfortable and known. This sometimes shows in food choices, friends, and bars.


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## xIrony (Feb 12, 2011)

I don't really know much about cognitive functions and the like, but I'll take a shot with:
Some of Fi's values are somehow proven false in some way, so Fi falls back onto Te to scientifically and metholodically look for new answers?


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## Naama (Dec 5, 2010)

i dont agree with this at all. first of all ego does not equal your dominant function. ego is the things you are aware/conscious of, let it be acting by your function or thinking what you should write. naturally you are more conscious about your dominant function than you are on your inferior(at least most the times), that means that usually dom function has stronger representation in your ego than there is representation of your inferior in your ego.

also i dont see neurosis developing from dom giving room for inferior, more like when inferior is used, but dom tries to control it -> inferior is controlling/setting boundaries for the dom.

for INTP it would be Ti working in the lines of Fe. its obvious that Ti cant understand Fe(unless it can be reasoned both ways), but if Ti is too dominated by ego it forces itself to make sense of everything, including Fe. this endless Ti analysis on Fe(that it cant understand in most cases) will cause endless loop of analysis and because Fe coming out of shadow(as in these cases Ti dominates ego), it comes out on negative things mostly and endless Ti analysis is focused on negative things. this sort of loop between Ti and Fe will build an source of negative emotions that just wont quit and that way cause an neurosis.
the way out of this is to accept Fe as a part of the ego and let go of trying to make sense of it with Ti.

Same sort of thing can happen between any opposing functions and between aux and tert, but with aux tert its easier to let go because neither of them dominates ego so much that it would cause so strong "loop" between the opposing functions.

you shouldnt try to make so strict rules like being humiliated will bring out Fe, because things just doesent go with some rules that strict.


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## gambit (Jun 24, 2010)

^ Yeah, maybe... I don't know. Maybe Jung was wrong or none of this typology stuff really makes much sense outside of what we choose to find enlightening in it.

But I just know Jung had the idea that the dominant function, by it's orientation with reality, can be a problem if too much focus is put on it and the inferior becomes a relieving force for the dominant (one that shifts the mind productively into the inferior). This was his whole point in coming up with function polarities:
Ti-Fe
Fi-Te
Ni-Se
Si-Ne

When I said conscious/unconscious or subconscious that's a pretty big abstraction because how do we define just what is conscious or not? But this was still his idea. MBTI uses some vastly different type interpretations and function definitions from what Jung outlined, but I'm referring to Jung.

Philosophically speaking I would say that the dominant is the egos best offense/defense and that when it becomes maladaptive instead, then that is where the neurosis appears and the inferior usage becomes a way to break that neurosis, even if developing the inferior doesn't seem efficient or useful in short-sighted glances and this would explain why it is something that takes time to develop into something seen as inherently useful or efficient. But Jung believed that regardless it was a positive thing for the psyche to _do this_.

Edit: If you think about it another way, the inferior development becomes a manifestation of the amount of failures that the dominant has encountered - and this process becomes a natural progression of age or time.


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## Naama (Dec 5, 2010)

gambit said:


> ^ Yeah, maybe... I don't know. Maybe Jung was wrong or none of this typology stuff really makes much sense outside of what we choose to find enlightening in it.
> 
> But I just know Jung had the idea that the dominant function, by it's orientation with reality, can be a problem if too much focus is put on it and the inferior becomes a relieving force for the dominant (one that shifts the mind productively into the inferior). This was his whole point in coming up with function polarities:
> Ti-Fe
> ...


i think the typology stuff makes alot of sense. its natural to humans that they understand things mainly when they are able to put things in context first, thats why it might be hard for people to make sense of jungs typology outside of what you choose to find enlightening. you just need to put it in many different contexts and youll learn to put it in ones that doesent fit on some particular context that you are trying to find enlightenment in.

the too much focus on dominant(first function dominating the ego) is exactly what i was talking about my INTP dom-inferior neurosis thing. relying too strongly on Ti will cause it to force itself on things that it cant really get(Fe in this case). and inferior turns into relieving force when you let go of the dom trying to force itself on everything.

freuds definitions for conscious, unconscious and preconscious are:

conscious = everything you are aware of at the given moment

personal unconscious =


> The personal layer of the unconscious, distinct from the collective unconscious.
> 
> 
> The personal unconscious contains lost memories, painful ideas that are repressed (i.e., forgotten on purpose), subliminal perceptions, by which are meant sense-perceptions that were not strong enough to reach consciousness, and finally, contents that are not yet ripe for consciousness.["The Personal and the Collective Unconscious," ibid., par. 103.]


and something for you to read:
dom = Lexicon of Jungian Terms | New York Association for Analytical Psychology
inferior = Lexicon of Jungian Terms | New York Association for Analytical Psychology



> opposites Lexicon of Jungian Terms | New York Association for Analytical Psychology
> This in turn activates the process of compensation, which leads to an irrational “third,” the transcendent function.
> 
> Out of [the] collision of opposites the unconscious psyche always creates a third thing of an irrational nature, which the conscious mind neither expects nor understands. It presents itself in a form that is neither a straight “yes” nor a straight “no.”["The Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW 9i, par. 285."The Psychology of the Child Archetype," CW 9i, par. 285.]


transcendent function Lexicon of Jungian Terms | New York Association for Analytical Psychology
tert Lexicon of Jungian Terms | New York Association for Analytical Psychology

also
conflict Lexicon of Jungian Terms | New York Association for Analytical Psychology
neurosis Lexicon of Jungian Terms | New York Association for Analytical Psychology
self-regulation of the psyche Lexicon of Jungian Terms | New York Association for Analytical Psychology

and last but not least: individuation Lexicon of Jungian Terms | New York Association for Analytical Psychology


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## kateykinz (Nov 19, 2009)

Fi - > type fails to live up to their ideal behaviour, uses Te to compare their ideal to the behaviour of others, finding that the ideal behaviour is not sustainable/necessary/desirable to the majority of people, hence excusing their failure.

Or is that using Fe, rather than Te?


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## gambit (Jun 24, 2010)

I think I can explain what it was I thinking here now, but didn't verbalize well.

It has to do with the functions being completely reflective of one another in their respect with the world. One exerts and is extroverted and the other is passive and introverts. To use one you have to inadvertently suppress the other. If you think about what this means is that the unconscious part lingers and wants expression. Sometimes we give it expression and it can feel good and at other times it can make use vulnerable to its influence, so we suppress it again. But essentially the unconscious part is expressed as spontaneous and mystical, something that's probably seen as either endearingly innocent or just childish to someone with the ego of our unconscious functions.

That makes so much sense to me, it's uncanny.

Does this sound right to you, Naama?


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## ukinfj (Apr 15, 2011)

@gambit I actually don't see the binaries as being opposites, although I see where you're coming from and I think they're supposed to be opposites in the original theory. But I think it is less that we suppress one and live the other and can switch between and more that we live them all all of the time, its just that their relative strength influences the other. If I lived entirely in Ni, I'd probably be dead by now! You can still tell I'm an N-dom - I'm very much in my own mind, find it difficult to stay in touch with reality etc - but you can see my Se quite a lot too and it is something people point out a lot - that I like immediate sensory material. I always talk about what I can smell and see or how something feels (sensation wise) and encourage people to look, listen, smell etc on the assumption everybody else will find it as joyful as I do - which usually raises a few laughs from others who think I'm like a child in that way! But I understand my Ni and Se to be working together. I'm still dreamy and abstracted (though thankfully the other functions drive me forward!) but I can be "in the moment" - it's just that I see the moment in a bit of a dreamy way, perhaps.

I think the reason we have those binaries is because we *need* to do both. We need to be inside and outside at all times because if we weren't we would have big problems socialising. It seems to me that we would need to be using everything all the time. There is no need for Ni to suppress Se because they are not exactly opposites. Se enjoys the immediate and Ni is its natural companion - it projects and explores according to the immediate information (and related information stored in the mind) rather than skipping along away from the immediate object in a creative way (Ne) and enjoying stumbling upon things that have personal meaning to you based on what they remind you of (Si). I can see them working together quite necessarily. Si does not need the object to remain the same because the feeling lingers - so it can Ne the shit out of things and retain the deep connection they feel to the world. Se sees things as being immediate and Ni sees things as being arbitrary - so this is immediately right here in an arbitrary way - essentially, neither Se nor Ni sets down meaning and allows personal attachment (at this stage). The way the info becomes personalised is that it is a) right here right now (Se) and b) slots here into my world view and refines it (rather than changes it) - (Ni).

However, I think perhaps we use our lesser used functions as a bit of a break. you hear of INFJs smashing stuff up (I did when I was a kid to be honest). Or perhaps bingeing food or alcohol, becoming adrenaline junkies - I certainly feel more alive when I feel i am really doing something in the real world, which is really because I spend most of my time in my head so it is refreshing to be in the moment and feel like I'm living - as if I'm really connected to the world around me. It is because these moments we feel the force of our inferior functions are fleeting that they are so relieving. But I would say it is more that we need to be balanced out, than that there is suppression happening (suppression suggests Ni and Se were always as strong but one is being repressed, where maybe its just that Se was always weak and does not need to be repressed, you're just not very good at it!)


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