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

Introversion and the Four Functions 83therefore, the prophetic contents that break through will bepessimistic and negative. 104Although accurate in recording physical reality, the sensationfunction tends to be sluggish, slow-moving. To the extentthat the other functions are unconscious, this type easily getsstuck in a rut, bogged down in the routine of the present moment.Attuned to the here and now, what is, they have thegreatest difficulty imagining what might be, the possibilitiesthat are the natural domain of the intuitive.So long as the sensation type does not hold too aloof fromthe object, writes Jung, "his unconscious intuition has a salutarycompensating effect on the rather fantastic and overcredulousattitude of consciousness":But as soon as the unconscious becomes antagonistic, the archaicintuitions come to the surface and exert their perniciousinfluence, forcing themselves on the individual and producingcompulsive ideas of the most perverse kind. The result is usuallya compulsion neurosis, in which the hysterical featuresare masked by symptoms of exhaustion. 105The Introverted Intuitive TypeIntuition, like sensation, is an irrational function of perception.Where the latter is motivated by physical reality, theformer is oriented to psychic reality. In the extraverted attitude,the subjective factor is suppressed, but in the introvert itis decisive. When this way of functioning is dominant, wehave an introverted intuitive type.Introverted intuition is directed to the contents of the unconscious.Although it may be stimulated by external objects,writes Jung, "it does not concern itself with external possibili-104 Jung's Typology, p. 29.105 Psychological Types, CW 6, par. 654.