Things are decidedly different in this part of the world. Though I am used to seeing deer outside of my window, this year they have become more brazen. Sensing that there is safety for them within the town, they have seemingly lost their fear. Yesterday, a four-point buck slowly walked down the sidewalk to visit a two does that have taken up residence in my neighbour’s yard. And, it just isn’t about deer or Pronghorn antelopes.
We have had birds which I have never seen in this prairie town, stop for a chat in our backyard. The birds are far off their normal stomping grounds. This is a strange year. Most of us are sticking close to home and limiting our social interactions. We are using Zoom or other such video conferencing software for meetings, education and for at-distance social activities such as yoga. I have to admit that social distancing is much easier for introverts than it is for extroverts.
With that said, I want to return to my psychological discussion about personality types from a Jungian perspective. I have talked about Introverts and Extroverts, about Sensation and Intuition, as well as Thinking and Feeling. I haven’t talked about the Meyers-Briggs categories of Perception and Judgement. Why? Well, primarily because they aren’t functions which Jung discusses in his work. Just for the record, I am using Jung’s book, number six in a series of twenty books, called Psychological Types.
Now, I don’t discount the Meyers-Briggs test at all. I have taught it and have used it within my work world when I was younger. I also encourage others to take the test or one quite similar. Free tests are found at 16 Personalities and Human Metrics.
These tests show a person which of the functions are the strongest ones, and which are the weakest. For example, I test as INFP. That said, this information is not enough to know, in my opinion. The test show me which of the functions between N and F is the strongest. In my case, N has the highest percentage. Knowing that, I can deduce that its opposite S [sensation function] is the weakest. When I match my I-Introversion with my “strongest” function, I get a dominant pair – IN – an introverted intuitive base personality.
I want to use a visual to highlight the possibilities. INfp – Introverted Intuition type. InFp Introverted Feeling type. This leads to the idea of having the following personality types: Introverted Intuition, Introverted Sensation, Introverted Feeling and Introverted Thinking, and Extroverted Intuition, Extroverted Sensation, Extroverted Feeling and Extroverted Thinking types – eight base types. Though I have both Feeling and Intuition in my personality, Intuition is the dominant function.
Like all measures, I want to stress that the type you find for yourself, it is only measures the foundational type, or as I name it, who we are when all things are at rest within us. The external reality of living in a world has us move towards other descriptions for brief moments of time. When those brief moments become too extended, we find ourselves very stressed.
I would love to hear from you about your test results. Please include which one is your dominant function between N, S, P and T. In future posts I will be describing these eight base personality types á la Carl Gustav Jung.