Adj: (of a person)weak and delicate Easily damaged, fragile.
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Looking at the prompt for @inktober day 8, frail, I’m reminded how I used to equate frail to introverted. It’s often seen as a negative to be less talkative or “shy”. Over the years as a therapist, I’ve learned being introverted does not equate to being frail. Introverted is (for myself) more in line with being empathetic and an attentive listener while still being able to advocate for myself and clients.
“I am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but any person at all. I like watching people, but I don’t like talking to them, dealing with them, pleasing them, or offending them. I am tired.”
Did a cover and a spot for The Washington Post’s Local Living section for a story about nurturing introverted kids. It was great working with AD Amanda Soto again!
An essay composed of stray thoughts strung together, featuring a lazy and dishonest attempt at citation.
There is one main difference between Jung’s concept of introversion/extraversion and that of the Big 5 model, which is considered the “Gold Standard” of modern personality psychology. In brief, Jung’s version is bipolar while the Big 5 uses a unipolar spectrum. This means that Jung juxtaposes introversion and extraversion as two different and opposed principles. Each one occupies a certain domain, namely that of the psychological “interior” and that of relation with the outside world. Neither one is exactly reducible to the other. Both have positive manifestations, meant not as a valuation, but technically: While from the outside, the extravert appears to be more engaging and the introvert more withdrawn, internally the introvert is also actively seeking something, but something different from external objects and object-relations. The introvert “seeks the subject”, or the meaning contained within—and native to—their own psyche [1].
Meanwhile, Big 5 introversion is essentially a lack of extraversion. Extraversion is characterized by several facets: gregariousness, assertiveness, activity-seeking, enthusiasm, and more. Depending on the study and framework used, introversion—technically “low extraversion”—is mildly correlated with neuroticism, a separate scale measuring a propensity for negative emotions and moods like anxiety and depression. But overall, introversion is presented as a second-class trait, a lack rather than an active component of the personality. Other traits that are intuitively associated with introversion, like imaginativeness, are the domain of trait Openness in the Big 5. A handful of benefits are observed in introversion, such as a tendency to do better in academia, possibly because of a greater ability to focus on one or two topics for long stretches of time, and because introverts participate in fewer distractions [2]. But nowhere is introversion explicitly associated with interiority. That said, the statistics—based on a linguistic study of personality such as the Big 5—would have trouble showing this. It’s been argued that the Big 5’s lexical basis makes it prone to pro-social biases, since language itself is a pro-social tool [4]. Therefore, extraversion would make a bigger “splash” in the factor analysis than an asocial trait like introversion. Furthermore, to an observer, inwardness is often synonymous with opacity. Introverts are best defined by what they don’treveal about themselves. A scientific investigation of introversion as a first-order trait would have to progress in more creative directions.
What does the non-psychometric research on introversion/extraversion say? Studies have found that the mesocortical dopamine reward circuit, dubbed the “seeking” or “approach” system, is more active in extraverts than in introverts [3]. The reward system is what gives us an inner incentive to pursue certain activities and acquire things we want. It plays a part in attention by ‘imbuing’ things with salience, making us expectant of a reward, drawing our energy and gaze towards them. It is also the basis of addiction, as all addictive drugs potentiate the circuit in various ways. According to Panksepp, the seeking system does not correspond to pleasure exactly, but to the emotion of enthusiasm [5]. Enthusiasm, as you might recall, is one of the major sub-facets of Big 5 trait extraversion.
All this to say that according to this research, the extravert is more expectant of reward, more incentivized to pursue and explore things in the environment, more enthusiastic, and furthermore that this might be the mechanical basis of trait extraversion. Introverts would have less activity of this system. My question is this: Is the difference so linear? It’s known that all people exhibit a wide array of behaviours and emotions, but that the stable psychometric traits best describe the ‘average point’ of those behaviours [citation needed]. Jung also thought the two types of behaviour are highly context-dependant, so that an introvert in an easy and familiar environment would be indistinguishable from an extrovert, and an extrovert left to ponder their often-ignored complexes would be anxious and inhibited. Furthermore, he thought that it is not that the magnitude of a bout of enthusiasm that is different, but that introverts and extraverts get enthusiastic about different things.
First, I will round out a relation between the seeking system and Jungian psychology. In psychoanalysis, the fact that meaning is never inherent in the object but synthesized by the subject manifests itself as “projection”. It is the individual nervous system that imbues things with salience, as if the same person were both chasing and holding up the carrot-on-a-fishing-pole. Jung calls the function that creates these projections the Anima, because in his analyses of dreams and fantasies as well as mythology and folklore, he often found it personified as a woman (or as a man in the case of a woman—the Animus). For example, the Hindu goddess Maya, who spins the web of illusions that draw people out into the play of life. And this is exactly what the seeking system does: it produces the feeling of expectancy that spurs us into activity, into exploration, work, love, and sex.
According to Jung—and this is where I think his ideas get the most complex, and as a result unlikely, but they are fascinating to share—the Anima is ‘more unconscious’ in the psyche of the extravert. Since they are more interested in things in the environment than the inner workings of their mind, the Anima—which is one of these ‘inner workings’—sits outside of the field of awareness. To perform its function, it accesses the consciousness of the extravert in a roundabout way. It projects all kinds of personal contents onto external objects, so that these objects accrue the meaning contained in the extrovert’s own soul. This contributes to the heightened salience of the outside world for the extravert. Meanwhile, since the introvert spends more of their waking life absorbed in their own psyche, they gain more direct access—not in explicit awareness, but in intimations—of the functioning of the Anima. Their attention is directed not at external projections, but at the Anima image itself and the meaning it carries internally. Salience is contained in ideas and feelings, and is extended to the outside world only insofar as things—be they books, artwork, activities, or people—correspond to and evoke this inner reality.
If we put aside the more nebulous ideas about the location, function, and image of the Anima archetype, we can generate a simple hypothesis: Introverts and extraverts get enthusiastic about different things, based on a different principle. The relative difference in the quantity of seeking system activity might be accounted for by introverts encountering salient stimuli with a lower frequency rather than a lower amplitude—or, that the experimental stimuli are geared more towards the extroverted psychology. Jung expressed the context-dependency of this dynamic in a sort of allegory: An introvert and an extravert approach a castle in the countryside. The extravert expects to meet all sorts of positive things on the inside—gracious hosts, feasts, adventures—and gets excited about entering. The introvert, more anxious with respect to the environment, is worried about guard dogs and cantankerous keepers. However, they go inside. There they find it is filled with books and scrolls like an old library. The introvert’s eye is caught by this and that and scurries about in excitement. The extravert, meanwhile, is severely disappointed. This is not nearly as stimulating as they expected. They even start to become sour and cranky, more like the demeanour of a defensive introvert than their normal sanguine state. The extravert is drawn to the possibility of excitement and adventure; the introvert, to elaborations on ideas that are personal to them.
In this essay I’ve made a small attempt to reconcile Jung’s older and more theoretical ideas about introversion with modern psychometric and neuropsychological research. My emphasis was on creating a unified conceptual interpretation of the facts and theories involved. Specifically, I think Jung’s ideas about introversion/extraversion as the direction of interest/flow of libido, as well as the projection-making Anima, have the potential to correspond well with studies of the mesocortical reward circuit or “seeking” system, provided we make a deeper study of the potential context-dependency of this system. If this turns out to be correct, it would open more questions about the “why” of this personality dimension, since the relative difference in seeking behaviour would be the manifestation of a deeper basis rather than the basis itself. Perhaps it is, as Jung suggested, something analogous to r/K selection theory [6]: the opposite survival tactics of “high defenses and low fertility” versus “low defenses and high fertility”. In any case, I think it is worth returning to the investigation of introversion/extroversion as a bipolar dimension, since the psychometric, linguistic Big 5 version doesn’t seem to do justice to the introverted type.
Works cited: Lazy but getting thereedition
[1] Jung, C. G., & Baynes, H. G. (1926). Psychological types: Or, The psychology of individuation.
[2] ENTWISTLE, N. J. and ENTWISTLE, D. (1970), THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PERSONALITY, STUDY METHODS AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 40: 132–143. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8279.1970.tb02113.x
[3] Depue, R., & Collins, P. (1999). Neurobiology of the structure of personality: Dopamine, facilitation of incentive motivation, and extraversion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences,22(3), 491-517.
[4] Trofimova, I. (2014). Observer Bias: An Interaction of Temperament Traits with Biases in the Semantic Perception of Lexical Material. PLoS ONE, 9(1), e85677. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085677
[5] Satoshi Ikemoto, Jaak Panksepp, The role of nucleus accumbens dopamine in motivated behavior: a unifying interpretation with special reference to reward-seeking, In Brain Research Reviews, Volume 31, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 6-41, ISSN 0165-0173, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0165-0173(99)00023-5.
[6] Eric R. Pianka, “On r- and K-Selection,” The American Naturalist 104, no. 940 (Nov. - Dec., 1970): 592-597.
In this article, we won’t be exploring the introverted and extroverted types so much as the specific mechanisms of introversion and extroversion. In order to isolate these concepts, any time I mention the respective types, imagine them as hypothetical puretypes. A normal type has a conscious mix of both introverted and extroverted factors. Also remember that whatever an individual is consciously, his unconscious compensates him by containing the opposite. So, an introvert is an extrovert in his unconscious, and vice versa.
Jung calls introversion and extroversion the “inward-turning of libido” and “outward-turning of libido” respectively. What he means by libidoorpsychic energy is not the same as Freud’s still-popular concept of sex drive – instead, it is an abstract concept designating the weight of value and interest given to any particular mental content or external object. For example, a psychological function with a large sum of libido is going to be at the forefront of consciousness, highly active and producing thoughts, feelings, hunches, or sense-impressions that are intrinsically interesting and valuable. The unconscious, too, has a dormant sum of libido – dormant, that is, until it activates a content like a complex or a strong emotion, which then bursts into consciousness uninvited. Conscious libido is essentially willpower; unconscious libido is akin to instinctual impulses.
Therefore, the two mechanisms designate the general flow of energy, whether it activates and confers value to external objects, or does the same to inner contents. Extroversion is an interest in the external world, in the multiplicity of objects and people, focussing on their specificity and differences. The Ego is constantly seeking to relate to the object in some way, to affect it or be affected by it, and it finds its identity in its relation to the ever-changing environment. Introversion is an interest in the inner world, on emotion-toned complexes and inner archetypes. It focuses on the similarities between things, so that it can organise them internally under the header of general ideas, which are derived in essence from the archetypes. It seeks to detach itself from the outside world, to keep the inner world in perfect stasis and harmony, and finds its identity in the changelessness of the Ego.
The two mechanisms play an important role in the emotionalityof a personality. Extroversion, as the mechanism that bridges the individual and the outside world, is associated with how the individual reacts emotionally to external stimuli. Extroversion is characterised by a quick, open, and emotion-laden reactivity. We can call this the affectiveoremotionalattitude. Introversion, on the other hand, we can call the detachedattitude, as it seeks to sever ties with the outside world as much as possible. However, while calling the extroverted and introverted types “affective” and “detached” might work at a glance (extroverts appearing active and expressive, introverts appearing passive and inscrutable), it doesn’t hold up to deeper investigation. Introverts often experience the most intense emotions, while extroverts, having a conscious and well-adapted affectivity, dispense with them quickly and easily. This is because the introvert’s conscious detached-ness is compensated by a large unconscious affectivity (extroverted attitude), which finds little expression and, worse still, is empowered by the unstable, primal libido of the unconscious. The extrovert, on the other hand, is unconscious of his detached inner thoughts and feelings (introverted attitude), which have their own morbid character, but not the emotional one of the introvert’s.
This dynamic of the unconscious attitude has a reinforcing effect on the individual’s conscious personality. This is due to the projectionof unconscious contents. When an extrovert projects his unconscious onto external objects, he sees in them the image of his own unconscious personality – that is, passive, detached, inert. Because of the outside world’s apparent harmlessness, he is even more inclined to go out and interact with it freely, and in the process he reclaims his own unconscious inner world. The introvert unfortunately sees the object as having his own unconscious affectivity. The outside world is active and animated, full of things that are dangerous and fearful, reflecting the primal, daemonic nature of the unconscious. This validates the introvert’s impulse to withdraw and defend himself against the outer onslaught, which again represents his own unconscious life. (Remember, these are pure types – the normal individual, while still not seeing objectively, projects a middle-of-the-road mixture of characteristics onto objects.)
Finally, Jung posits that the introvert is characterised by a great psychic tension or inhibition as compared to the extrovert. This is because he is always worried, consciously or unconsciously, that an external stimulus will trigger or disrupt an inner complex, or even worse, one of those volatile, primal affects. An extrovert, who acts in direct relationship to the external world, does not share this fear, and as a result is the more relaxed and disinhibited type. However, each type can act like the other in certain circumstances. An introvert in a safe and familiar environment will be allowed to forget his complexes and relax, while an extrovert left alone to contemplate his own complexes – which are as dangerous and daemonic as the introvert’s affectivity – will jump at the smallest noise.
To recap: Introversion and extroversion designate the movement of libido (= interest) in the psyche. Extroversion is always related to objects; it is the more affective (emotional) and relaxed mechanism. It projects the image of a passive, inert object. Introversion is related to inner contents; it is the more detached and tense mechanism. It projects the image of an active, dangerous object. An introverted attitude is compensated by an extroverted attitude in the unconscious, and vice versa. In a normal type, both the conscious and unconscious personalities will have a mix of both mechanisms.
The cornerstone of Jung’s psychology is the theory of the collective unconscious. A rough understanding of it – if not more! – is very important for understanding introversion. In my opinion, the fact that people have apparently forgotten it, that no one discusses it on internet typology communities, has caused a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. So, strap in for this one.
Jung’s predecessor and mentor, Freud, first viewed the unconscious as a receptacle (read: trash can) of thoughts, feelings, memories, and above all sexual and aggressive impulses, that people repressed in order to function in civilised society and keep up their peace of mind (or the illusion of it). Jung thought that was just one part of the picture. He thought up a deeper, older, and more fundamental part of the mind; he called it the collective unconscious, and said it was made up of archetypes.
You can picture it something like this: Just as everyone has a body that’s basically the same as every other human body (four limbs, one head, a liver, a heart), so does the mind have a basic substructure common to all of us. Our bodies and psyches are only different on a surface level. That’s why Jung called this part of the unconscious “collective”, in that it’s shared by everyone – not as a single, amorphous “psychic” blob that everyone can access, but as a structure that is born again in every individual. Some parts of it might be as old as the psyche itself, in the same way that parts of our bodies are so old that we share them with other mammals, and even reptiles.
The collective unconscious houses the archetypes. These are typical patterns of thought or cognition, the logical result of all of us having the same nervous system. Some of these structures seem to show up in our imaginations in the same way, time and time again, in specific symbols or archetypal images. Jung called them the “self-portraits of the instincts”. And, in fact, there is a lot of overlap between the concepts of instinctandarchetype: Just as we think of instincts as fixed, automatic, and inborn patterns of behaviour, an archetype is a fixed, inborn pattern of mental activity. Archetypes are tied up with a myriad of facts of human existence, since they’ve developed over millions of years of human and pre-human life. We find the corresponding archetypal images in every culture, in all mythologies and religions, and also in our own spontaneous dreams and fantasies.
For any of our psychological functions, the influence of the outside world is the same as the influence of the collective unconscious, the “inner world”. Extroversion and introversion are where our energy goes, where we direct our interest: Whether we’re trying to grasp, shape, and benefit from something in the outer world, or if we’re trying to do the same with an inner archetype. Introverts do this through their favoured function – Thinking builds theories with the help of the archetypal substructure; Feeling finds powerful, universal values in them. Sensation understands that the things it sees have meaning, pattern, and form; Intuition gets impressions straight from the unconscious imagination.
Remember that while introverted functions are influenced by the archetypes, we don’t experience them directly. The archetypes themselves are just pattern and form; they’re tendency, not content. They still have to be “filled up” by our personal experiences. Once we’ve “brought one to life” with carefully (but organically!) organised facts, thoughts, and feelings, we can see the archetypal form beneath it all.
We can find an example of this in modern physics’ quest to find a unifying theory of the universe – a “Theory of Everything”. This is a perfect example of Thinking basing itself on an archetype (which would make it IntrovertedThinking). Namely, it’s the archetype of wholeness or unity – what Jung calls the self– which is often drawn as a mandala: Everything is contained within a circle. Nothing is left out. The physicists build a theory around the archetype, in a way that clearly shows just how compelling it is to them. On the other hand, an Extroverted Thinker might think that kind of project is pointless or even boring, unless he finds himself in an environment where it’s really needed (like a physics academy dominated by Introverts).
To recap: The collective unconscious is an ancient, inherited part of our minds. It’s made up of archetypes, which are fixed patterns of thought and imagination, the mental counterpart to instincts. Archetypes have evolved over millions of years, so they represent many facts of life in abstract forms. Introversion focuses interest and energy on these archetypes, so that any function, when it’s introverted, is drawn to their universal forms.
“This work sprang originally from my need to define the ways in which my outlook differed from Freud’s and Adler’s. In attempting to answer this question, I came across the problem of types; for it is one’s psychological type which from the outset determines and limits a person’s judgement. My book, therefore, was an effort to deal with the relationship of the individual to the world, to people and things. It discussed the various aspects of consciousness, the various attitudes the conscious mind might take toward the world, and thus constitutes a psychology of consciousness regarded from what might be called a clinical angle.”
- C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
Not everybody approaches the world in the same way. In fact, most people seem to differ from each other greatly – sometimes it seems like a miracle that we can even get along at all! In attempting to explore this problem, Jung devised a system of types that – although not as scientifically rigorous as modern personality inventories like the Big 5 or the MMPI – was simple, elegant, and deep. This should be repeated: Jung’s typology, although rooted in practical experience, is intuitive and symbolic in nature. It is meant firstly as a therapeutic tool and not as a strictly scientific theory.
Jung’s typology is made up of six elements. The first are two attitudes: IntroversionandExtroversion. These represent the direction of interest of the psyche and the movement of its energy, whether inwards or outwards. The others are four functions: Thinking,Feeling,SensationandIntuition. These are modes of operation that, between the four of them, roughly encompass your conscious experience. The shorthand goes like this: Sensation tells us that something is there; Thinking tells us what it is; Feeling tells us if it is agreeable or not; Intuition tells us from where it came and to where it might go.
Introversion is an inwards-turning of energy. It’s an orientation that expresses the supremacy of subjective part of life; one’s inner thoughts, feelings, personal experiences, and the deep unconscious*. This does not mean that introverts are always introspective – instead, their relation to the outside world is coloured by their subjective view in such a way that their perceptions and judgements hinge more on their private inner reality than on the shared reality of the objective world. Because their energy moves away from the object (and towards the subject), they tend to be relatively reserved, inscrutable, and shy.
*Footnote to Introversion: The “deep unconscious” here refers to the Collective Unconscious, which is covered in another article. To summarise, the subject isn’t only made up of personal experiences or memories. Just as we all have an inherited body that is only superficially different between individuals, so do we have an inherited psyche that has evolved over millions of years. Introversion relies particularly heavily on inherited, instinctual images and patterns of thought. Pushed to the extreme, these manifest as a mythological or religious quality of thought, since myths are just the collective expression of these inner archetypes through stories.
Extroversion is an outwards-turning of energy. Here the objective part of life is the most important. Extroverts think and act in a way that corresponds more directly to external conditions. They aren’t necessarily perfectly adjusted – extroversion is no guarantee of good social skills, and furthermore, neglecting their inner life often results in grief for the extrovert. However, they are constantly impelled to relate to the outer world in some way, and in turn to be affected by it, whether that means they’re on good terms with everybody, or that they pick fights with everybody. In general they are relatively open, sociable, jovial, or at least friendly and approachable.
The four functions are made up of two pairs of opposites. Sensation and Intuition make up the first pair. These are the “irrational” orperceiving functions. Sensation takes in impressions of the material world via the five senses, which often results in a pragmatic, grounded, or aesthetically-minded personality. Intuition is a subconscious or subliminal perception that, roughly speaking, presents the user with a whole where only a part is objectively visible. This often results in a speculative, flighty, or imaginative personality. Thinking and Feeling are the “rational” or judgingfunctions. Thinking takes a detached, mechanistic view of problems, and seeks to put the world in conceptual or at least logical terms. Feeling recognises and imparts subjective value onto things, deciding whether or not they are agreeable and good.
However, these functions are never developed and used in an individual to the same extent. As a rule, one becomes the person’s primary approach to life – thedominantfunction. Its incompatible opposite is partially repressed as a result. This becomes theinferiorfunction. The two other functions are in a middle-state of differentiation, and therefore are less harshly polarised. One is usually theauxiliaryfunction, which supports and counterbalances the dominant – a functional sidekick. This is not a hard rule, though: both could be auxiliaries, or both could be undifferentiated inferior functions. However, the most common arrangement consists of two conscious functions, the dominant and main auxiliary, and two unconscious inferior functions.
Fig. 1 - A Thinking dominant, Feeling inferior arrangement. The two middle functions, Sensation and Intuition, are halfway between consciousness and unconsciousness. They can be developed auxiliaries or underdeveloped inferiors.
These dominant-auxiliary combinations begin to paint familiar pictures – the practical problem-solver with Thinking and Sensation, the esoteric creative artist with Feeling and Intuition, etc. The inferior function also tends to be recognisable. We all know people who have terrible difficulties with Feeling, or for whom material reality is always a stumbling block thanks to inferior Sensation.
Finally, in any given function type, a certain attitude will also dominate. This attitude does not exist on its own, but applies to the dominant function, so that the Thinking of a Thinking type might actually be Introverted or Extroverted. The opposite attitude, however, is repressed and combines with the inferior function. The middle functions are again in a more mercurial middle state; they often have the capacity to shift either way. This results in a distinct set of types, which are described in my Jung Abridged series.
To recap: Two attitudes, Introversion and Extroversion. Four functions: two perceiving, that is Sensation and Intuition, and two judging, that is Thinking and Feeling. One is dominant and conscious; its opposite is inferior and unconscious. The other two functions can be either conscious auxiliaries or unconscious inferiors. The dominant function has a characteristic attitude; the inferior takes the opposite attitude. Those are the basics – from here you can check out any of my other articles, which deal with many aspects of this schematic in greater depth. Enjoy!
These articles are an attempt to condense Chapter X of Psychological Types into a more readable format. I’ve tried to stay as true to the original texts as possible. Enjoy!
Introverted Intuition is directed at the contents of the unconscious. However, just as our senses only give us an approximate image of the objective world, so does Ni give an approximate image or impression of the inner world and its contents. Although it may be triggered by an external stimulus, it doesn’t focus on the external possibilities, but on what images are released in the psyche. Unlike Si, these images don’t concern the course of sensations, but their underlying causes or hidden meanings. However, since the Ni type represses Sensation, he rarely manages to connect the resulting hunches to himself or his bodily existence, instead seeing them as if they had an objective existence of their own.
Just as Ne chases every possibility in the outer world, Ni chases every image that arises from the inner world, “the teeming womb of the unconscious”. Again, the Ni type doesn’t connect them to himself, and since he’s only concerned with perceiving them, he isn’t impelled to shape them into rational judgements like Ti or Fi. The latter are also only affected by the images subconsciously – by contrast, Ni seeks to explore every detail of them, with the same clarity that Se has with respect to the outer world.
Ni is the function which is most intimately connected with the collective unconscious. The archetypal patterns, which have evolved over millions of years to represent eternal patterns of life, are the main source of the insight which Ni often provides. Its tendency to project into the future is thanks to an almost direct consultation with these archetypes. If paired with Feeling, it has the potential to paint a more or less complete picture of another person’s psychology.
The Introverted Intuitive Type
This type is oriented by his inner vision, and the more intensely he relies on intuition, the more he is divorced from tangible reality. In exceptional cases he might be something like a seer, or an artist whose work is far-off and psychedelic – all at once beautiful and grotesque, since it represents the Janus-faced nature of the psyche. If he neglects to share or express his perceptions, he might become an eccentric or a crank, someone completely incomprehensible to his peers.
The pure type stops at the perception his vision, and perhaps the aesthetic shaping of it in art. He suppresses any attempt to make it into a moral problem. However, as soon as he differentiates an auxiliary Judging function, he begins to face certain questions. What does this image mean for me and for for others? What task or duty does it represent for me? He begins to dimly perceive that he is actually connected to his vision, and subsequently feels he has to actualise it somehow. However, since he’s more adapted to his inner world than present-day reality, he has great difficulties in bringing his vision to his society. His life becomes symbolic, with little relevance to any concrete reality. His arguments fall short, since his reasoning functions are secondary to his vision, and at a certain point he can only claim “I just know”.
This type is characterised by a risky tendency to suppress concrete reality. Even the normal type has trouble connecting his inner vision to his own life. He might becomes increasingly unaware of his bodily existence or its effect on others. If he becomes completely one-sided, his outer life hits him through Sensation in his unconscious, causing a neurotic, compulsive dependence on concrete reality. He begins to suffer from all kinds of hypochondrial symptoms, hypersensitivity to sensations, and exaggerated ties to certain objects and people.
Perhaps I don’t speak the only language I know so good
So today I didn’t want to deal with public transportation and I wanted a few extra winks of sleep, so send in the Uber.
*Deep breath* so I order my first Uber, I do pool cause you know the environment and I’m being cheapfiscally responsible. The driver is about 9 minutes away and he’s either picking up or dropping someone off. About 5…
I’m a dreamer but also a realist. I seek truths but will go against the norm and think bigger in order to find them. That is my personal way of dreaming.
I’m so introverted and introspective that interaction with the outside world has always been tedious and terrifying. I fought to become better acclimated to societal interaction. It wasn’t easy, but I’m pretty good at it now. I have exactly as many friends as I want, and I am capable of functioning like an adult. A lot of people don’t even know that I’m an introvert, but the girl who was afraid to call to order a pizza and petrified of asking for help in the grocery store will always be inside of me somewhere. I can fool other people and even myself, but on some level, I’ll always struggle with this.
