Understanding Jung's Eight Psychological Functions

An in-depth exploration of Jung's Eight Psychological Functions and the different personality types they define.

Understanding Jung's Eight Psychological Functions

Introduction Jung's Eight Psychological Functions is a personality analysis method based on Carl Jung's psychological theory. It divides personality into eight dimensions: Ni (Introverted Intuition), Ne (Extraverted Intuition), Si (Introverted Sensing), Se (Extraverted Sensing), Fi (Introverted Feeling), Ti (Introverted Thinking), Fe (Extraverted Feeling), and Te (Extraverted Thinking).

The Two Mental Attitudes There are two mental attitudes: extraversion and introversion.

• Extraverted individuals direct their psychological energy towards the external objective world. They enjoy interacting with the outside, are fond of socializing, pay attention to external things, and are curious about their surroundings.
• Introverted people have an inward flow of psychological energy. They focus more on their inner world, prefer being alone and self-reflecting, and have relatively less interest in the external world and others.

The Four Basic Psychological Functions

• Thinking: Understands the world through concepts and logical analysis, seeking methods to understand and solve problems.
• Feeling: Evaluates things based on personal values and emotional responses, focusing on the emotional significance of things.
• Sensing: Obtains information through sensory perception and emphasizes practical feelings and experiences.
• Intuition: Does not rely on sensory perception but acquires information through intuition or a 'sixth sense', often unable to explain its source or occurrence process.

The Eight Types

• Extraverted Intuitive Type (Ne): These people love to daydream and discover new possibilities in the external world. They dislike tedious and monotonous daily routines and pursue novel stimuli but find it hard to maintain long-term interest in a particular person or thing and are difficult to engage in a fixed job.
• Introverted Intuitive Type (Ni): People of this type often have a rich and strange inner spiritual world, which is neither emotional nor thinking but filled with various colorful primordial images.
• Extraverted Sensing Type (Se): Such individuals enjoy the sensory stimulation brought by the external world and do not seek a deep understanding of the connotations of things. In extreme cases, they may become hedonists or flamboyant aestheticists.
• Introverted Sensing Type (Si): These people like to immerse themselves in their own subjective sensory world and are indifferent to the outside world.
• Extraverted Feeling Type (Fe): In these people, emotion overrides reason. Their emotions are easily influenced by external things, and any slight touch from the outside world can lead to drastic changes in their emotions.
• Introverted Feeling Type (Fi): Unlike extraverted feeling types who show emotions openly, although they are also rich in emotions.
• Extraverted Thinking Type (Te): Individuals of this type tend to suppress the emotional side of their nature, so sometimes they may appear indifferent. In extreme cases, the overly suppressed emotions can react pathologically on the individual, making them stubborn and conceited and not accepting any criticism.
• Introverted Thinking Type (Ti): People of this type have the characteristics of introverts. They are also good at thinking processes such as induction and deduction. However, compared to extraverted thinking types, their thinking objects are more the subjective spiritual world. They care about ideological concepts themselves rather than external objective things. The typical example of this personality type is a philosopher.

Reference Materials The references provided at the end of the original article offer further exploration and understanding of Jung's Eight Psychological Functions.