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

Introduction to Jungian Typology 35to make out, because every individual is an exception to therule. 32What follows in the next chapters is for the most part a distillationof Jung's writings on the subject, observations byMarie-Louise von Franz and my own experience.The reader is well advised to bear in mind that the descriptionsof the types, and indeed the model itself, are not writtenin stone. As Jung himself pointed out, "the classification oftypes according to introversion and extraversion and the fourbasic functions [is not] the only possible one." 33 He did believe,however, that his model was useful, a practical way toorient ourselves, psychologically, as completely as when welocate a place geographically by latitude and longitude:The four functions are somewhat like the four points of thecompass; they are just as arbitrary and just as indispensable.Nothing prevents our shifting the cardinal points as many degreesas we like in one direction or the other, or giving themdifferent names. It is merely a question of convention and intelligibility.But one thing I must confess: I would not for anythingdispense with this compass on my psychological voyagesof discovery. 34It must further be acknowledged that anything written here(as anywhere else) cannot escape being biased according tothe typology of the writer.Personally, as far as I can tell after some twenty-five yearsof mulling over my own psychology, I could be an introvertedsensation type—at the moment. My thinking is on the whole agood auxiliary function, my feeling is erratic and intuition isparticularly hard to come by.32 Psychological Types, CW 6, par. 895.33 Ibid., par. 914.34 Ibid., par. 958f.