scholia - University of Otago

'Invention, Guilt and the Fall from Innocence', T. E. Knight 21
our approach makes no claim to be psychological or Jungian in any sense
proper to those words.
In Jung's view, the human psyche is a vital function of the organism, the
principal purpose of which is to maintain the equilibrium and balance of the
whole. Though the psyche has both conscious and unconscious parts, the selfregulating
principle of the whole operates automatically, that is, unconsciously.
In this dynamic conception, the psyche has four primary modes of perception or
functions which may be conceived as two polarized sets of intersecting axes.
The 'horizontal' axis relates to non-valuative and non-refle.ctive (in Jungian
terms 'irrational') modes of perception, and has as its poles the antithetical
functions which Jung terms sensation and intuition. 8 Briefly put, sensation
assimilates experience through the medium of the sense organs, intuition
organizes experience by anticipation and empathic insight into the other. 9 The
'vertical' axis, on the other hand, relates to valuative and reflective (or
' rational') modes of perception, and has as its polarities the functions of feeling
and thinking. What feeling and thinking have in common is that both organize
the contents of consciousness by imparting 'definite value in the sense of
acceptance or rejection'; they differ in that feeling is the subjective valuation of
experience itself, whereas thinking is the valuation of concepts. 10
The significance of these distinctions for cultural anthropology needs to
be spelled out, if only briefly. Human culture is the product of a process of
interactions among persons who internalize the human world they inhabit. That
world has both subjective and objective content by virtue of an elaborate
dialectical interaction between subject and object involving projection,
8 For general definitions cf. 'Definitions' in W. McGuire et al. (edd.), The Collected
Works of C. G. Junl 6 (London 1971) 408-95, s.vv. 'feeling', 'function', 'intuition'.
'irrational', 'rational', 'sensation', 'tbinldng'. For a more detailed discussion of the
psychological functions, cf. C. G. Jung, 'General Description of the Types', in McGuire et al.
[above, this note] 330-407.
9 S. Baron-Cohen uses the term 'mindreading' in 'First Lessons in Mindreading', The
Times Higher Education Supplement, 16 June 1995, 18f., in summation of h.is book on autism
Mindblindness (Cambridge, Mass. 1995): 'Researchers in developmental psychology were
tackling the question "How does a child become social?" The answer seemed to be by
becoming a proficient mindreader. That is, when the normal child (and adult) sees a social
situation he or she interprets the situation in terms of people's mental states-their thoughts,
desires, intentions, beliefs and so on'.
10 Jung [8] 434; cf. also 435: 'In the same way that th.inking organizes the contents of
consciousness under concepts, feeling arranges them according to their value. The more
concrete it is, the more subjective and personal is the value conferred upon them; but the
more abstract it is, the more universal and objective the value will be' .