Personality types: Jung's model of typology - Inner City Books

32 Introduction to Jungian Typologyfor the extravert the object is interesting and attractive, whilethe subject, psychic reality, is more important to the introvert.Whether one is predominantly introverted or extraverted,there are inescapable psychological implications due to therole of the unconscious. Some of these are noted in the nextsection and more specifically in the chapters describing thecharacteristics of each attitude type. For particular medicalconsequences, see appendix 1, "The Clinical Significance ofExtraversion and Introversion."The Role of the UnconsciousThe great difficulty in diagnosing the types is due to the factthat the dominant conscious attitude is unconsciously compensatedor balanced by its opposite.Introversion or extraversion, as a typical attitude, indicatesan essential bias that conditions one's whole psychic process.The habitual mode of reaction determines not only the style ofbehavior, but also the quality of subjective experience. Moreover,it determines what is required in terms of compensationby the unconscious. Since either attitude is by itself one-sided,there would be a complete loss of psychic balance if therewere no compensation by an unconscious counterposition.Hence alongside or behind the introvert's usual way offunctioning there is an unconscious extraverted attitude thatautomatically compensates the one-sidedness of consciousness.Similarly, the one-sidedness of extraversion is balancedor modified by an unconscious introverted attitude.Strictly speaking, there is no demonstrable "attitude of theunconscious," but only ways of functioning that are coloredby unconsciousness. It is in this sense that one can speak of acompensating attitude in the unconscious.As we have seen, generally only one of the four functions isdifferentiated enough to be freely manipulable by the con-