von Franz on the Inferior function

One of the leading writers on the subject of psychological types was Marie-Louse von Franz.  Dr. von Franz worked with Jung for many years until his death in 1961.  Jung himself said of von Franz, "She's one of the best," so her credentials are sterling.  She gave a series of lectures in 1961 at the Jung Institute.  They were transcribed into a book titled Jung's Typology. 

I was determined to read the book after Dr. John Beebe (see Roles of the Processes on this site) spoke highly of it, and he regards it as a primer for our less developed processes. 

The following is excerpted from the book.  The first is some general material, in order to frame the conversation, followed by her descriptions of the inferior processes for INFPs and INFJs.

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A typical aspect of the inferior function, which is also connected with its unadaptedness and primitiveness, is its touchiness and tyranny.  Most people, when their inferior function is in any way touched upon, become terribly childish:  they can't stand the slightest criticism and always feel attacked.  Here they are uncertain of themselves; with that, naturally, they tyrannize everybody around them because everybody has to walk carefully.  If you want to say something about another person's inferior function, it is like walking on eggs; people cannot stand any criticism there.  A rite d'entrée is required.  One must wait for the right moment, for a peaceful atmosphere, and then carefully, with a long introductory speech, one might get across some slight criticism about the inferior function. 

But simply to shoot criticism at people will only get them absolutely bewildered and emotional, and the situation is ruined.  I learned this for the first time with amazement many years ago when I was still studying.  A fellow student showed me a paper she had written.  She was a feeling type.  The paper was very good, but in a minor passage where she switched from one theme to another it seemed to me that there was a hiatus in the connection of thought.  What she said was quite right, but between the two passages, for a thinking type, the logical transition was lacking.  So I said to her that I thought it was an excellent paper but that on one page she might make a better transition.  At that, she got absolutely emotional and said:  "Oh well, then it's all ruined, I shall just burn it," and she grabbed it out of my hand saying:  "I know it's junk.  I shall burn it up!"  I pulled it from her:  "For God's sake, don't burn it up!"  "Oh well," she said, "I knew you thought it would be junk," and in this vein she went on and on.  When the storm was over I was able to get in a word and said:  "You need not even retype it, you only need to write in one little sentence to make the transition -- just one sentence between these two paragraphs."  The storm started all over again, and I gave up!

I saw her later, and she told me that the night afterward she dreamt that her house burnt down and, typically, the fire started in the roof!  I thought:  "My God, these feeling types!"  For her, writing the paper had been such an achievement, bringing out some thoughts, and it had been just at the limit of what she could do.  She simply couldn't stand that little bit.  It wasn't even criticism, but just the idea that it could be improved a bit.  That is an extreme case of what happens with the inferior function.  It tyrannizes its surroundings by being touchy, for all touchiness is a form of secret tyranny.  Sensitive people are just tyrannical people:  everybody else has to adapt to them instead of their trying to adapt to others.  But people who are well adapted still generally have a kind of childish, touchy spot where one cannot talk to them reasonably.  I know an introverted intuitive woman -- and to go with her to choose a blouse!  Never again!  It takes an eternity, until the whole shop is mad!  But it cannot be speeded up.  It does not help to get impatient.  And naturally that is what is so discouraging about getting up the inferior function:  one has not the time for it.

INFPs and ISFPs
(Rational Types)
In Jungian terminology:
The Introverted Feeling Type;
Inferior Extraverted Thinking

The introverted feeling type also has the characteristic that he adapts to life mainly by feeling, but in an introverted way.  This type is very difficult to understand.  Jung says in Psychological Types that the saying "still waters run deep" applies to this type.  They have a highly differentiated scale of values, but they do not express them outwardly; they are affected by them within.  One often finds the introverted feeling type in the background where important and valuable events are taking place, as if their introverted feeling had told them "that is the real thing."  With a kind of silent loyalty, and without any explanation, they turn up in places where important and valuable inner facts, archetypal constellations, are to be found.  They also generally exert a positive secret influence on their surroundings by setting standards.  The others observe them, and though they say nothing, for they are too introverted to express themselves much, they set certain standards.  Introverted feeling types, for instance, very often form the ethical backbone of a group:  without irritating the others by preaching moral or ethical precepts, they themselves have such correct standards of ethical values that they secretly emanate a positive influence on those around them.  One has to behave correctly because they have the right kind of value standard, which always suggestively forces one to be decent if they are present.  Their differentiated introverted feeling sees what is inwardly the really important factor.

The thinking of this type is extraverted.  In striking contrast to their silent and inconspicuous outer appearance, persons of the introverted feeling type are generally interested in an immense number of outer facts.  In their conscious personality they do not move about much; they tend to sit in their badger's hole.  But their extraverted thinking roams about in an extraordinary range of outer facts.  If they want to use their extraverted thinking in a creative way, they have the usual extravert's difficulty of being overwhelmed by too much material, too many references and too many facts, so their inferior extraverted thinking sometimes just gets lost in a morass of details through which they can no longer find their way.  The inferiority of their extraverted thinking very often expresses itself in a certain monomania:  they have actually only one or two thoughts with which they race through a tremendous amount of material.  Jung always characterized the Freudian system as a typical example of extraverted thinking.

Jung never said anything about Freud's type as a human being; he only pointed out in his books that Freud's system represents extraverted thinking.  What I add now is my own personal conviction, namely, that Freud himself was an introverted feeling type, and therefore his writings bear the characteristics of his inferior extraverted thinking.  In all his works the basic ideas are few.  With them he has raced through an enormous amount of material, and the whole system is completely oriented toward the outer object.  If one reads biographical notes about Freud, one sees that as a person he had a most differentiated way of treating other people.  He was an excellent analyst.  He had also a kind of hidden "gentlemanliness" which had a positive influence upon his patients and upon his surroundings.  One must really in his case make a distinction between his theory and his personality as a human being.  I think, from what one hears about him, that he belonged to the introverted feeling type*.

The advantage of inferior extraverted thinking is what I just now characterized negatively as "racing with a few ideas through a tremendous amount of material."  (Freud himself complained that his dream interpretations felt awfully monotonous; the same interpretation of every dream was boring even to him.)  If this tendency is not overdone, and if the introverted feeling type is aware of the danger of his inferior function and keeps a check on it, it has the great advantage of being simple, clear and intelligible.  But this is not enough, and the introverted feeling type is obliged to drill a bit deeper and try to specify and differentiate his extraverted thinking.  Otherwise he will fall into the trap of intellectual monomania.  Therefore, he has to specify his thinking; that is, he should make the hypothesis that each fact he quotes in proof of his ideas illustrates them in a slightly different way, and with this point in view, his ideas should be reformulated each time.  In that way he maintains the living process of contact between thought and fact, instead of simply imposing his thought upon facts.  Inferior extraverted thinking has just the same negative tendencies of becoming tyrannical, stiff and unyielding, and in that way not quite adapted to its object, that all other inferior functions have.

INFJs and INTJs
(Irrational Types)
In Jungian terminology:
The Introverted Intuitive Type;
Inferior Extraverted Sensation

The introverted intuitive type has the same capacity as the extraverted intuitive for smelling out the future, having the right guess or the right hunch about the not-yet-seen future possibilities of a situation.  But his intuition is turned within, and therefore he is primarily the type of the religious prophet, of the seer.  On a primitive level, he is the shaman who knows what the gods and the ghosts and the ancestral spirits are planning, and who conveys their messages to the tribe.  In psychological language we should say that he knows about the slow processes which go on in the collective unconscious, the archetypal changes, and he communicates them to society.  The prophets of the Old Testament, for instance, were people who, while the children of Israel were happily asleep -- as the masses always are -- from time to time told them what Yahweh's real intentions were, what he was doing now, and what he wanted his people to do.  The people generally did not enjoy hearing these messages.

Many introverted intuitives are to be found among artists and poets.  They generally are artists who produce very archetypal and fantastic material, such as you find in Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra or in Gustav Meyrinck's The Golem and Kubin's The Other Side.  This kind of visionary art is generally only understood by later generations, as a representation of what was going on in the collective unconscious at that time.

The inferior sensation of this type also has difficulties in noticing the needs of the body and controlling its appetites.  Swedenborg had a vision in which God himself told him he should not eat so much!  He ate naturally, without the slightest self-discipline and with complete unawareness.  Swedenborg was a typical introverted intuitive, the prophet or seer type, and he was simply coarse and uninhibited about over-eating.  The introverted intuitive also suffers, as the extraverted intuitive does, from a tremendous vagueness where facts are concerned.

As an illustration of the more ridiculous aspect of the inferior sensation of an introverted intuitive, I offer the following story.  An introverted intuitive woman was present when I gave a lecture on early Greek philosophy and was terribly moved and impressed by it.  Afterward, she asked me to give her private lessons on the subject of pre-Socratic philosophy, as she wanted to get deeper into this field.  She invited me to tea and, as happens very often when you have to give lessons to introverted intuitives, she wasted the first hour in telling me how moved she was and what she conceived to be at the back of my mind and what she believed we could do together, and so on.  The second hour also got wasted in the same way, and, as I felt I should earn my money and get her going somehow, I insisted we look at a book which I had brought and proceed in a systematic way.  She agreed, but added that I must leave her alone:  she had to do it quite her own way.  I noticed that she was getting nervous.

When I came back for the next hour, she said she had found the best way to get into the problem:  namely, that she could naturally not study Greek philosophy without knowing about the Greeks, and she could not know about the Greeks before knowing quite concretely about their country.  So she had started to draw a map of Greece, and she showed me the map.  It had taken a lot of time.  With her inferior sensation she had first had to buy paper and pencils and ink.  That excited her enormously; she was absolutely in heaven about her achievement!  She said that she could not yet go on with philosophy; she had first to finish the map.  So by the next time she had colored it!  That went on for a few months, and then her intuition picked another theme, and we never got down to Greek philosophy.  She left Zurich and I did not see her again until about fifteen years later; then she told me a long story of how she was still impressed and moved by the lessons on Greek philosophy which I had given her and all that she had gained from them.  She had just drawn a map.  She was a very extreme case of introverted intuition.  But I must admit, in looking back, that I see what a really numinous thing it was for that woman to draw this map of Greece; for the first time she had got in touch with her inferior sensation.

The introverted intuitive is often so completely unaware of outer facts that his reports have to be treated with the greatest care.  Though he does not lie consciously, he can tell the most appalling untruths, simply because he does not notice what is right under his nose.  I very often distrust ghost reports, for instance, and reports about para-psychological facts for those reasons.  Introverted intuitives are very much interested in such fields, but because of their weakness in observing facts and their lack of concentration on the external situation, they can tell you the most appalling nonsense and swear it is true.  They pass by an absolutely amazing number of outer facts and just do not take them in.  I remember, for instance, driving with an introverted intuiting type one autumn, and in the fields the potatoes were being dug up and there were bonfires.  I had noticed that for quite some time and was enjoying the sight.  Suddenly the driver stopped the car in horror, sniffed, and said, "Something is burning!  Is it coming from outside?"  We looked at the brakes, and everything was all right; then we decided it was outside after all.  It was the bonfires!  The bonfires were everywhere, and to me it was obvious that the smell of burning came from them.  But an introverted intuitive can drive for an hour through the country with such phenomena all about and not notice a thing.  And then suddenly he will be struck by the fact and make completely incorrect deductions.  His inferior sensation has the quality which all inferior functions have, namely, that it comes up into consciousness in islands; sometimes it functions, and then it disappears.  Suddenly a smell is intensely realized, whereas three-quarters of an hour before it was not realized at all, but then suddenly it is taken in with great intensity.

The inferior sensation of an introverted intuitive is extremely intense, but it breaks though only here and there and then fades again from the field of awareness.  The introverted intuitive has particular trouble in approaching sex because it involves his inferior extraverted sensation.  It is most tragically mirrored in the works of Nietzsche, for instance, where, toward the end of his career, shortly before he went insane, very coarse sexual allusions penetrate his poems and also appear in Thus Spake Zarathustra.  When he went insane, he apparently produced material of that kind, which was destroyed after his death because of its absolutely distasteful character.  Inferior extraverted sensation in his case was very much connected with women and sex, in a completely concrete way, and he didn't know how to deal with the problem at all.

The positive aspect of inferior extraverted sensation in the case of an introverted intuitive is to be found in an interesting way in the illumination experience of Jakob Boehme, a German mystic and an introverted intuitive type.  He had a wife and six children for whom he never earned any money.  He was in constant trouble with them because his wife always said that instead of writing books about God and fantasizing about the inner development of the Godhead he would do better to see that his family had something to eat.  He was absolutely crucified between these two poles of life.  Now his greatest inner experience, a revelation of the Godhead upon which all his later writings are based, came from seeing a ray of light being reflected in a tin plate.  That sensation experience snapped him into an inner ecstasy, and within a minute he saw, so to speak, the whole mystery of the Godhead.  For years he did nothing except slowly translate into discursive language what he had seen inwardly in one minute, in one second!  His writing is so emotional and chaotic because he tried to describe this one experience in so many amplifications.  But the actual vision was set in motion by seeing a ray of light striking a tin plate on his table.  This implies extraverted sensation:  an outer sensation fact started off the process of individuation in him.  Here one can see, besides the inferior aspect of extraverted sensation, this strange character of wholeness, the mystical aspect, which the inferior function often has.  It is interesting that even Swedenborg's over-eating connected him with the Godhead.  His inferior sensation was connected with his deepest and greatest concern.

More about the inferior function on the next page...

*Dr. John Beebe is of the opinion that Freud had preferences for ISFP.

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