The weird intuitive introverted psychological type

The psychological type that has the introverted attitude and the most developed psychic function of intuition is not easily accessible or understandable. In this text, we talk more about this type. See also a rare interview by Jung.

Hello friends!

I recently purchased several books on Jung and analytical psychology. For those who don’t know, I study the Jung’s Complete Works and yours red book, in my doctorate. As I bought several, especially biographies, letters and interviews, I hadn’t had time to read them all. Yesterday I was looking at the contents of the book Interviews with Jung and Ernest Jones’ reactions.

Ernest Jones was one of the most important psychoanalysts. He worked with Freud in the consolidation of psychoanalysis and even wrote the first biography about the father of psychoanalysis.

In this book, Richard Evans interviews both Jung and Jones, so we can read the interviews. Knowing that Jung had given these interviews in 1957 and that they had been filmed, I looked it up on YouTube and found a section. The total is 4 hours of interview. In the video below, you can see about 1 hour.

The weird intuitive introverted psychological type

Jung became internationally known for his theory of complexes and, equally, for his theory of personality, which serves as a guideline for the clinical practice of psychologists around the world, and also for the evaluation of personnel selection in companies.

In this theoretical construction, we have 2 attitudes (introversion and extroversion) and 4 psychic functions (thinking, feeling, intuition and sensation). In the interview you will see the following definition:

“The sensation tells us that there is something. Thought, generally speaking, tells us what that thing is. Feeling informs us whether or not this thing is pleasant, whether or not it should be accepted, admitted or rejected. And intuition…here we are faced with a difficulty because, normally, we don’t know how intuition works”. Further ahead he summarizes: “My definition of intuition is a perception by unconscious ways or means (JUNG, p. 93-94)”.

Well, just by this definition we already have a certain strangeness. We can understand that intuition is a perception. Something comes to mind, an impression, an image, a feeling of discomfort or motivation that gives us certainty about an external object. For example, when we know, when we are absolutely sure that something will work out or not. Or when we have the impression that we are going to meet an old friend, and we bump into him around the next corner.

All of this would be illustrative of the extroverted intuitive type. Or, better said, the intuition function linked to the external world (extraversion). However, for each function, Jung poses the possibility of being both extroverted and introverted. So there is a kind of intuition that turns inward.

And it is precisely for this reason that the introverted intuitive type (of which Jung himself was an example) is a rare, distant, strange type, and, most of the time, misunderstood.

In the interview, Richard Evans asks:

– “What would be an example of the difference between an intuitive extrovert and an intuitive introvert?”

– “Well, you have chosen a rather difficult case, because one of the types that offer the greatest difficulties is precisely the intuitive introvert… We find the intuitive extrovert in all kinds of bankers, gamblers, etc. very understandable. The introvert is more difficult because he has intuitions concerning the subjective factor, that is, the inner world; and of course this is very difficult to understand because what he sees are extremely unusual things, things he doesn’t like to talk about if he’s not an imbecile. If he does, he will spoil his own game by telling what he sees, because people won’t understand that”.

And then, after the case example of an introverted intuitive patient, he says: “So if the introverted intuitive were to say what he really perceives, practically nobody would understand him; it would be misinterpreted. So such people learn to keep these things to themselves. We will hardly hear them talk about these things. In a way, this is a great disadvantage, but on the other hand, it is very advantageous that these people do not talk about their experiences, both inner ones and those that occur in their human relationships.

For example, they may be in the presence of someone they haven’t known since the time of Adam, and suddenly they may have inner images. Well, these inner images can provide you with a lot of information about the psychology of that person you just met. This is a typical example of cases that happen frequently.

Suddenly, they know an important piece of that person’s biography, and if they don’t keep things to themselves, they’ll tell the story. This is like throwing fat on the fire! So the intuitive introvert has, in a way, a very difficult, yet very interesting life. It is very difficult to gain their trust” (JUNG, p. 99-100).

Although in this interview Jung does not say that he himself was an introverted intuitive type, with a secondary thinking function, he elsewhere mentions his own typology. In his autobiography Memórias, Sonhos e Reflexões, he tells the following story:

“From my mother I inherited the gift, not always pleasant, of seeing men and things as they are. Naturally I can be completely wrong when I don’t want to recognize some detail, but deep down I always know what it is. ‘Real knowledge’ is linked to an instinct, to the participation mystique with the other. It could be said that it is the ‘deeper look’ that sees, in an impersonal act of intuition.

Only later did I understand this fact, when a strange incident occurred: I related without knowing the life of a man I did not know. It was at the wedding party of a friend of my wife, about whose family I knew nothing. At the table opposite me sat a middle-aged gentleman with a nice beard, who had been introduced to me as a lawyer.

In order to answer a given question I had posed to myself, I imagined a case, embellishing it with numerous details. As I spoke, I noticed that my interlocutor was completely changing his expression and that a strange silence formed around the table. Surprised, I shut up. Thank goodness we were already through dessert.

I got up and went to the hall of the hotel. I isolated myself in a corner, lit a cigar and tried to reflect on the situation. At that moment, one of the guests who had been at the table approached me and reproached me:

– How could you commit such an indiscretion?

– Indiscretion?

– Yes, the story you told!

– But I invented it end to end!

With great astonishment, I learned then that I had told in all detail the story of the lawyer who had sat across from me at the table.”

Conclusion

Before concluding, I would like to point out that the word strange in the title is not pejorative. Stranger has the same etymological root as the word foreigner. With that said, I like to think that the introverted type (already a little unapproachable) and especially the intuitive introverted type mainly he is a stranger-foreigner in a land like ours, of extroverts.

He is strange-foreign because people don’t understand him. Because he is not understood, he tends to close himself and have few and rare friends. Therefore, your intuitions – which are valid for you but are also valid for others – can remain silent.

Of course, the example of Jung’s indiscretion is just one example of an unfortunate situation in which an intuitive introvert spilled the beans. But this same ability to understand people was certainly useful for the psychologist Jung, as well as the immense research he carried out on the psyche, such as the research that shows this whole process of imagery of the inner world in the forgotten Gnostics and Alchemists.

The interview below, of Grandpa Jung at 82 years old, a Swiss German speaking in English, unfortunately has subtitles in Spanish and not Portuguese. However, as our language is close, it is possible to understand:

Related