The Question of Psychological Types: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Hans Schmid-Guisan, 1915-1916: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Hans Schmid-Guisan, 1915-1916

by C.G. Jung, Hans Schmid-Guisan, John Beebe (Editor)

The first English translation of correspondence tracing the development of Jung's theory of psychological types



In 1915, C. G. Jung and his psychiatrist colleague, Hans Schmid-Guisan, began a correspondence through which they hoped to codify fundamental individual differences of attention and consciousness. Their ambitious dialogue, focused on the opposition of extraversion and introversion, demonstrated the difficulty of reaching a shared awareness of differences even as it introduced concepts that would eventually enable Jung to create his landmark 1921 statement of the theory of psychological types. That theory, the basis of the widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and similar personality assessment tools, continues to inform not only personality psychology but also such diverse fields as marriage and career counseling and human resource management.

This correspondence reveals Jung fielding keen theoretical challenges from one of his most sensitive and perceptive colleagues, and provides a useful historical grounding for all those who work with, or are interested in, Jungian psychology and psychological typology.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Carl Gustav Jung (/jʊŋ/; German: [ˈkarl ˈɡʊstaf jʊŋ]), often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature, and related fields. He was a prolific writer, many of whose works were not published until after his death.

The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.

Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types.

Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas such as Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his ambition was to be seen as a man of science. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense.

Reviews

[Gold Dust]

Hans Schmid was Jung’s friend, pupil, and former analysand (3). They were of different types. This book makes clear that Jung thought of himself as an introverted thinker, and Hans Schmid was his opposite, the extraverted feeler (3, 8, 18, 19, 88, 119). Both were intuitives (8, 88).

Interesting to see how back in the 1900s, people wrote such long letters to each other with huge paragraphs. Nowadays, paragraphs are all super short and nobody writes letters to each other, just e-mails.

The personality types Jung came up with and described in Psychological Types seem pretty easy to think up, but this book shows that Jung had a lot of confusion and struggle defining them (5).

Jung wondered if there were “at least two different human types, one of them more interested in the object, the other more interested in himself” (2). I think that extraverts are not necessarily interested in the object more than themselves; they are just as selfish as introverts. The difference between them is more that the extravert likes people’s attention to be on her, and the introvert feels uncomfortable when people’s attention is on her; the extravert would rather talk and be listened to, and the introvert would rather listen instead of talk. There are also plenty of introverts who are fascinated with objects (things, not people)—usually the introverted sensing thinkers; I wouldn’t say that makes them extraverted.

Jung said that introverts assume a certain rejection toward the object (meaning people), which can develop into a fear of the object (55, 160) while the extravert loves the object. I assume this is why introverts tend to be shy; it’s a fear of people. I also assume that the reason why extraverts love the object is because extraverts crave the attention that objects give them. Jung said that the introvert thinks/preaches nice things but doesn’t do them, while the extravert does all sorts of nice things but does not think them (58, 161). I can see how this is true. Extraverts can seem nice and friendly to your face while they actually think negatively of you and will badmouth you behind your back (typical gossips). Introverts like myself have lots of ideas for how to improve the world but don’t take any steps to achieve it, and have love or hate feelings toward people but do not take action on those feelings.
Jung said “While the the introvert’s conscious attitude is an impersonal and just attitude of power, his unconscious attitude aims at inferior lust and pleasure; and while the extravert’s conscious attitude is a personal love for human beings, his unconscious attitude aims at unjust, tyrannical power” (60-61). “The introvert has a reactive type of loving but an active type of thinking. The extravert has a reactive type of thinking but an active type of loving” (167). I think he is referring to the Ti and Fe types specifically, but doesn’t call them that here because he hadn’t yet developed the idea for them yet. It’s assumed in these letters that all introverts are thinkers and all extraverts are feelers (62). He says that introverts want to reach/conquer the object by thinking, and extraverts reach out to objects in order to come to themselves because their internal world is unpleasant to them (62). I’d word it as: the introvert gets her value from her own opinion (positive or negative), but the extravert needs validation from others in order to feel valuable.

The book says that spell checkers will say “extroversion” is the proper spelling, but Jung said that that is bad Latin, and that the proper term should be “extraversion” (35).

Jung described introversion as “going into the mother, sinking into one’s own inner world or libido source” (10). Regressive extraversion = the hysteric projects upon the object his own illusions and subjective valuations. Regressive introversion = when the fantastic ideas refer to the subject himself, as in schizophrenia (11-12).

Jung credited the discovery of the intuitive type to Miss Moltzer. She said intuition was half conscious, half unconscious. It contains feelings as well as thoughts. She said it was the oldest human function and grew out of instinct (29-30). Here again we see the problem of intuition meaning different things. If it means some gut feeling you can’t explain, then yes, it’s instinct like what animals have. They just know how to fly or swim without needing to think about it or be taught how. They know to fly/run away when there’s an oncoming storm, without having been taught what signs to look for, while humans are clueless. But if we’re talking about imagination, then no, animals don’t have that. I’m high in imagination and low in instinct. Most humans are low in instinct (and imagination too). Almost everything humans know is because of what they were taught. Which is why humans are so helpless without technology to keep them alive; they’d die otherwise because they lack survival instincts.

Anyway, the book says that while Jung got the idea of intuition from Moltzer, he changed it in this sense: her version was that intuition was like another attitude such as extraversion and introversion, while Jung’s version was that intuition was another function like sensing, feeling, and thinking, separate from extraversion and introversion but paired with it (30). I would say that intuition is not akin to E/I. I like the S-N scale the way it is (separate from E-I), though I don’t necessarily think “sensing” and “intuition” are the best words to describe them. Maybe better words to describe what they encompass is something like realist and dreamer. The S type is concerned with reality, and the N type dreams of something different. Notice that these are not ways of perceiving information, but personality traits. Because it’s my opinion that we ALL perceive information through our five senses, even if some of us are “intuitive” types. The fact that we see, touch, hear, smell, etc. has no impact on our personality. Every BODY has these capabilities (unless they are deaf or blind), so they are not personality traits but the basic functions of our physical bodies.

The introduction summarized Jung having quoted seven authors who had made comparable personality distinctions in another book (not sure if it was Psychological Types or not) (12):
William James - tender vs. tough minded
Wilhelm Ostwald - romantics vs. classicists
Wilhelm Worringer - feeling into vs. abstraction
Friedrich Schiller - naive vs. sentimental
Friedrich Nietzsche - Apollonian vs. Dionysian
Franz Nikolaus Finch - action vs. sensation
Otto Gross - flatted and broadened consciousness vs. narrowed and deepened consciousness
This book mentioned some other authors who came up with similar ideas but Jung never mention them (12-13):
William Stern - objective vs. subjective
Alfred Binet - introspection vs. externospection
Ferenczi - neuroticism vs. paranoia

Notice how each of these are a dichotomous pair of opposites. (I also notice a lot of Williams/Wilhelms!) When describing something, it’s always on a spectrum between two polar opposites (hot or cold, big or small, etc.). Just the same with personality, everyone falls somewhere in between some extreme. Personality has always been about describing traits. And so the dichotomies of extraversion-introversion, sensing-intuition, feeling-thinking, and perceiving-judging do a better job of describing someone than a cognitive function which is a group of descriptions. Placing those functions in a certain order is like a list of priorities, e.g., work, games, books, hiking, meditation, concerts, TV. And the cognitive function theory claims that certain personality types will have their priorities in a certain order, without any proof. And their theory requires that an outdoor activity be next in a person’s priority list after an indoor activity, on and on. But common sense says that it’s more likely for an introvert to prefer all indoor activities, and an extravert to prefer all outdoor activities. It’d be very uncommon for someone to alternate outdoor, indoor, outdoor, indoor the way the cognitive function theory goes (E, I, E, I).

Jung said, “We must not forget that even Goethe is not the absolute authority but a human being who, as far as his unconscious is concerned, is just as small and impotent as any other insignificant person” (79). The same could be said of Jung and any other “expert” people treat as a god.

Jung said that a person who is high in any one trait is sick, and that people should strive to be evened out so that they are in the middle between the two opposing functions. This is valuable to the individual but not for society, for society thrives when extreme individuals (high in certain functions) produce things according to their unique talents (78). He also says that if we succeed in having all functions, we will be like gods, but being like a god can be dangerous and lead to self-destruction (84). He said that associating with people of the same type deepens the personality, but associating with opposing types is mandatory for adapting to reality (109).

[Jeremy]

Valuable for diehards and academics, but definitely not something I would ever recommend to a layman.

[Oskar Brenner]

The book consists of three parts, an introduction, 13 letters exchanged between Jung and Schmid-Guisan and an appendix written by Jung.

The introduction sheds some light about Jungs relationship with Schmid-Guisan and about the problems regarding to types that modern psychology wrestled with. The correspondence expresses what Schmid-Guisan and Jung agreed and disagreed on, both engaging in their respective type. The appendix was a summary about conclusions made by the psychiatrists, possible meant to be published together with the letters.

Jungs and Schmid-Guisans correspondence gave some insights about the types, however readers concerned about finding descriptions of them should read chapter X in psychological types. Extraversion and introversion is well described, and this is what is much focused on, when the functions are still being developed. There is constantly some misunderstandings between the psychologists, making the book an interesting but frustating read.

When it is discussed how extraverts and introverts should interact together it gets heated, and I cannot help but to be embarrased by how often Jung tries to “turn” Schmid-Guisan into an extravertic feeler and rejecting Schmids idea of introvertic feeling. Schimd-Guisan in his turn rejects Jungs idea of leveling the opposties in types, seeing it as a way of drying the personality. Both have yet to realize that there exists also a pair of opposites in sensing and intuition.

The book had plenty of footnotes explaining meaning of certain words and cleared some thoughts of the authors. Nonethless more would have been helpful. Jung sometimes uses his terminology in a fussy way. On page 163 he explains, that the introvert is completely extraverted in his thinking, when during the whole correspondence has been talking about the abstracted thinking of the introvert (introverted thinking).

Jungs and Schmids discussion is regardlessely an interesting read, and especially Jung loads heavy amounts of his general thoughts in his letters, which are not always too related to the problem of the types. Schimd formulates himself very clearly, and is way more readeable than Jung. The beginning of part five in the appendix is something quite magnificient, and Jung describes one of the biggest challenges in the world today, the loss of the soul of the man.

It is interesting that Jung identifies himself as a thinker with inferior feeling, when he nowadays commonly is typed as an introvertic intuitive (INFJ in MBTI-terms). Schmid guisan was very likely an extravertic intuitive (ENFP in MBTI).

[Timothy Ball]

"Knowledge without usefulness adorns philosophical chessboards and produces fat volumes for venerable libraries. Usefulness without meaning fills pockets."