The 8 types of personality that exist (according to Carl Jung)

Carl Jung –or Carl Gustav Jung– was a psychiatrist, psychologist and essayist who was key to the development of psychoanalysis.

He gave an important role to religious experience, without accepting the dogmas of any religion. He defined the collective unconscious and worked on the archetypes that populate it. He analyzed the structure of personality in various dimensions until reaching eight basic types.

In this article, the philosopher, writer and literary critic Rafael Narbona analyzes the importance of Carl Jung’s concept of the personal and collective unconscious, as well as his way of understanding personality.

“Carl Jung spoke fearlessly of myths, the soul, God, parapsychology, alchemy and flying saucers. He was never convinced by the image of reality constructed by sciencewhich only recognizes the data from experience as objective truth”, advances Rafael Narbona.

Carl Jung, the personal unconscious the collective unconscious

By Rafael Narbona, philosopher, writer and literary critic

Jung’s great contribution consisted in discovering the collective unconscious. In the structure of the psyche, there is a personal unconsciouswhere everything is preserved and shaken what conscience wants to repress and silenceand a collective unconscious, which contains the biological memory of the species.

The unconscious “is identical in all men and constitutes a common psychic substratum, of a suprapersonal nature. It encompasses an indescribable mass of stratifications deposited in the lifetime of our ancestors. It contains one or two million years of evolution.”

The collective unconscious is populated by archetypes. They are not inherited symbols or images, but empty and innate structures that represent the crucial experiences of our species: the image of the father and mother, of oneself, the relationship between the sexes, the figure of the hero, the wise man, the trickster. Archetypes manifest in dreams, but also in mythology, art, and religious traditions.

He Self (Selbst) is the central archetype of the collective unconscious. It expresses the totality of the human being, his “conscious self” and his “unconscious psyche”. The individual personality is forged with the interaction between these dimensions.

jung was inspired by the yin and yang of Taoism, concepts that reflect the duality of everything that exists. The Self is symbolically represented by the mandala. Archetypes are not one-dimensional, nor something individual and concrete, but a set of meanings. That’s why, the Self is also the archetype of divinity and the universal moral law.

The I is the complementary archetype of the Self. It includes the internal dimension of the psyche and the external world in its physical and sociocultural aspect. The I is the mediator between the inside and the outside. It has a free, autonomous will, which is channeled through language, memory and imagination. It could be said that the I is the conscious function of the Self.

Carl Jung: archetypes and personality structure

From this two-dimensional axis, arise the three archetypes that structure the personality: the Person, the Soul and the Shadow.

The Person is our “social mask”, the part we do visible.He Soul it is our way of being more intimate and deeper. He is unconscious and unfolds into anima and animus. In man, the animates is the image of the woman, the eternal feminine. In the woman, the animus is the image of man, the masculine. In both the other sex is perceived as fascinating and terrifying. The Shade represents the darker and unacceptable feelings, the taboo, the prohibited and disapproved. It is that dark dimension that we identify with evil and makes us guilty, because it seduces and attracts us.

The Hero is the archetype that expresses the fight against the Shadow. He is the savior, the guide and the redeemer. Jung cites the heroes of Greco-Roman mythology as an example, but considers that none can be compared to Buddha and Christ. The hero he is always protected and guided by the archetype of the Sage, and he bears the threat of the Trickster. If we look at Christ, Yahveh directs his steps and Satan tries to confuse him.

There is no definitive and closed number of archetypes. Jung considered impossible to make an exhaustive list of the contents of the collective unconsciousbecause it is a territory with large unexplored areas.

The 8 personality types according to Carl Jung

Sigmund Freud spoke of libido. Jung transforms that force into “psychic energy”.

Structured by the experiences of the collective unconscious and ancestral archetypes, psychic energy splits into two predominant attitudes: extraversion and introversion. The extraversion It usually reflects the acceptance of social conventions and the desire for social and professional success. The introversion It is characterized by introspection and reserve. He concept of success is different, it depends on inner goals.

These two attitudes They are combined with rational (thinking and feeling) and irrational (perceiving and intuiting) functions.producing eight personality types.

What type do you feel you fit into?

Carl Jung defined eight personality types combining our attitudes and functions. These are the main features of it.

Extraverted reflective. His vision of reality is based on the objective experience. They are people who only believe in the information provided by their senses. They identify with the dominant social model. His way of seeing reality implies a certain intolerance, since they consider fantasy, imagination and intuition irrational. It would be recommendable that they broaden their perspective, accepting that reality is not limited to certainties and evidence.reflective introvert. They are prone to distorting reality based only on theirour own impressions. They do not attend to the stimuli that come to them from the outside and do not pay attention to feelings or intuition. Inflexible, little perception of other people’s intentions makes them vulnerable to manipulation. They are considered misfits, but in an intimate relationship, their inner fragility ends up inspiring tenderness. Their quality of life would improve if they gave more credit to the emotional and intuitive.Extrovert sentimental. They are people who get carried away by events without reflecting on their cause and origin. Are excessively emotional and reluctant to abstract thought. They openly express their feelings and have a lot of empathy. His personality would be enriched with a more reflective mood that would allow them to go beyond appearances. It would be convenient for them to moderate their spontaneity until they get to know their interlocutor better.Introvert sentimental. They are unable to externalize their affections and aversions. Melancholic, reserved, mysterious, they try to go unnoticed. His indifference to the outside world fosters his tendency to isolation. They lack social skillss and almost no one understands his way of being. Their self-esteem would grow significantly if they released their emotions, expressing what they feel.extraverted perceiver They are guided by sensory perceptionhe. They are attached to tangible realities and constantly seek external stimuli. Apparently, they are cheerful and lively. They are often victims of emotional abuse., which encourages them to develop feelings of resentment and revenge. It is good to look for stimuli, but you have to delve into each experience. He resentment it only disappears when reasonable precautions are taken to avoid being needlessly injured.introverted perceptive His interpretation of reality and interpersonal relationships is excessively subjective. They live in an unreal world forged by his fantasy. They are often modest and quiet. Your vision of things will only become more objective and realistic by listening to others and contrasting opinions.Extraverted intuitive. They tend to be optimistic but fickle. They never finish their projects, although they generate a lot of expectations with their initiatives. With a own morality, they lack empathy. His leadership skills are amazing, but his instability tends to cause undesirable situations. His optimism and ambition would take on a more positive dimension with tenacity and empathy. Leadership is a responsibility that requires a clear vision of the objectives and a constructive spirit.Introverted intuitive. They are dreamers, creative, mystical and passionate to the point of fanaticism. Unstable in their interpersonal relationshipsThey live in a subjective world. They are perceived as enigmatic beings. If they knew their emotions, their relationships with others would be less unstable. Being enigmatic can be seductive, but it creates unnecessary distances that do not help to establish lasting bonds of affection.

Carl Jung Biography

Carl Gustav Jung born in 1875 in Kesswil, a small Swiss town. His father was a Lutheran pastor, but housed great doubts about his faith and his marriage. His wife was ambivalent in his affections and fluctuated between euphoria and depression. As a child, Carl was shy, fanciful, and introverted.

I study medicine at the University of Basel. In her doctoral thesis, she analyzed the case of a young medium who changed her personality during séances.

Freud considered him his dolphin, but over the years they staged an intellectual break. Jung claimed that Freud had become a hostage to his own theories: “He is a tragic figure, but a great man.”

Jung toured North Africa, India, New Mexico, and major European cities. when the Nazism came to power, sympathized with some of his tendenciessuch as anti-communism and the cult of the legendary, but did not support anti-Semitism or the war policy. CIA documents have revealed that since 1942 collaborated with American espionage.

At the end of the war, he settled in Bollingen, near Zurich, where in 1923 he had begun to build La Torre, a group of huts grouped in circles. Each enlargement represented a new layer of his personality, which entailed constantly changing the location of his office, to which only he had access. It was his mandala, his spiritual and symbolic center. On the lintel of the main door he engraved an old teaching from the oracle of Delphi: “Invoked or not called, the god is present.”

Jung passed away on June 6, 1961. At the moment of his death, lightning split the tree whose shade had served to protect him from the sun and rain on countless occasions. It was his favorite corner of his garden, where he used to read, write, meditate and dream.

God’s intuition

Jung attributed a great importance to religious experience, but it did not coincide with the point of view of any church or tradition. The religious experience is an opening to the unknown, not a dogma.

The human being always tends to go further, but the world, with its physical and temporal limits, thwarts that drive, confining him to the natural and empirical. However, the psyche decompensates if the mystery is excluded from its orbit. The transcendent is inexplicable, but necessary for the mental health of the individual and the community:

“In earlier times,” Jung writes, “the so-called neurotics would not have seen themselves dissociated from themselves…