Archive for November 29th, 2009
Great Blue Heron in Vancouver
This is a Great Blue Heron, a common bird in the lower mainland of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. This guy was sitting on the top of a tree near the entrance to Stanley Park in Vancouver as though he was some cynic standing disdainfully aside and above the common throng below. He definitely wasn’t a “people person,” an extrovert. In a way, he reminded me of myself – getting older and more watchful of the world at a somewhat safe distance.
Here I have used the masculine in describing this bird. But, the truth is, this introverted attitude or extraverted attitude is not something that is gender-related in the least. Nor, does this attitude have anything to do with social class or education or age. As C.G. Jung noted:
Such a widespread distribution could hardly have come about if it were merely a question of a conscious and deliberate choice of attitude. In that case, one would surely find one particular attitude in one particular class of people linked together by a common education and background and localized accordingly. But that is not so at all; on the contrary, the types seem to be distributed quite at random. In the same family one child is introverted, the other extraverted. Since the facts show that the attitude-type is a general phenomenon having an apparently random distribution, it cannot be a matter of conscious judgment or conscious intention, but must be due to some unconscious, instinctual cause. (Jung, CW vol. 6, par. 558.)
Thinking on this, I come to realize that I have often erred in being critical of others when it comes to attitude as others have too often erred in finding some deliberate negative intention because of my introverted attitude. I do not deliberately stand outside the crowd. It just happens naturally. It isn’t about intention, it is about avoiding extra anxiety that the crowd induces. It isn’t about a self-perceived superior attitude, it is about space so that I don’t get lost and become invisible even to myself.
I am beginning to see where this look at psychological types using C.G. Jung’s work is taking me. The intention was to re-investigate the topic here with conscious intention; unconsciously, it is again about re-self discovery.
