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

90 Concluding Remarkspointless. Its purpose is rather to provide a critical psychologywhich would make a methodical investigation and presentationof the empirical material possible. First and foremost, it isa critical tool for the research worker, who needs definitepoints of view and guidelines if he is to reduce the chaoticprofusion of individual experiences to any kind of order. . . .Secondly, a typology is a great help in understanding the widevariations that occur among individuals, and it also furnishes aclue to the fundamental differences in the psychological theoriesnow current. Last but not least, it is an essential means fordetermining the "personal equation" of the practising psychologist,who, armed with an exact knowledge of his differentiatedand inferior functions, can avoid many seriousblunders in dealing with his patients. 114Whether Jung's model is "true" or not—objectively true—is a moot point (is anything ever "objectively" true?). Certainly,the extent to which the two attitudes and the four functionsaccord with statistical reality has not been established. To dothat, one would have to correlate tests of millions of peoplewith great insight into themselves, and even then the resultswould be suspect, since the testing procedure itself would stilldepend on the typology of those who formulated the test—thequestions, phrasing, preconceptions, assumptions, etc.—not tomention the circumstantial vagaries that attend any test at aspecific time.The real "truth" is that Jung's model of psychological typeshas all the advantages and disadvantages of any scientificmodel. Although lacking statistical verification, it is equallyhard to disprove. But it accords with experiential reality.Moreover, since it is based on a fourfold—mandala-like—way of looking at things that is archetypal, it is psychologicallysatisfying.As mentioned earlier (page 31), a person's behavior can bequite misleading in determining typology. For instance, to en-114 Ibid., par. 986.