About a hundred years ago, psychologist Carl Jung issued his seminal essays on psychological types, introducing the now common concepts of “extroversion” and “introversion.” Jung considered the two types not original to himself, suggested, for example, by Goethe’s “systole” and “diastole” observed scientifically in the heartbeat, but also in the seasons, biology, music — what one Goethe editor calls the “interplay of polarities.” Jung applied this familiar idea to human behavior. Though popular audiences reduce extroversion and introversion to personalities, only about 20 percent of the population -— 10 percent on each pole — is exclusively one or the other type. Eighty percent of the population is relatively balanced, able to summon either disposition as needed.
Jung explains that the two types of behavior are not whims or deliberations but very specifically define our relationship to objects in our environment. Such an object may be a person, a landscape, a gathering, even an idea. The extravert defines a group of people as an objet and defines his relationship to it positively, an allure, an attraction, an opportunity, a source of energy, stimulation, and uplift. The extrovert will want to take in the object, make it part of self, merge or immerse with it as a desired part of self. Indeed, the object becomes the self through a subjective or introvert medium deeper than the external display of behavior.
In contrast, the introvert will see the same object, for example, a group of people, as a burden at best, a threat at worse. It is not that the group is objectively menacing, critical, or boring. The object is unnerving, unsettling, threatens the balance and inner tranquility that the introvert prizes, is always seeking to maintain. The object is foreign and inexplicable to the introvert, not intellectually or even socially but at a deep emotional level representing disquiet, uncertainty, threat to integrity, in the sense of wholeness. The object is not recognized as parallel or positive to any of the introvert’s psychological values or disposition. The relationship to the object, in short, is not a relationship, for the introvert rejects any relation, even when “trapped” into being in the presence of the object.
The important point for Jung is the object, yes, but the relationship to the object. The object has an objective status to the 80 percent, and it defines the object by its own characteristics, which is the goal of objectivity. To the extravert, the object is a delight, a lure, a pleasure, a stimuli. The object enters the psyche of the extrovert and is assembled among positive experiences. The object for the extravert, if very highly valued, becomes internalized, part of the self. Thus, while the majority looking at the object will judge its importance by a variety of criteria, the introvert may decide quickly on the positive value of the object, even to the point of wanting to embrace the object as essential. At this point the object becomes part of the self of the extravert, and is treated the way an introvert treats those treasured parts of the self.
How does the introvert treat its preferred objects? When the introvert encounters an object, the introvert can compare and contrast it with objects already within self. For the introvert will intrinsically have subjective preferences, and this subjective ambiance of inner self will apply the same behavioral criterion as does the extrovert. Does this object resonate with my emotional values? Does this object nourish or debilitate my energy. Is the object so multi-faceted that it cannot be judged instinctively? Is this object so complex that deciphering its impact is too much effort, too ambiguous, too elusive? Or is the object a stimulating challenge, an intrigue worth puruit?
Where the extrovert looks for stimulus, the introvert looks for compatibility with measure and restraint. Where the introvert looks for excitement, opportunity, novelty, creativity, the introvert looks for stasis, predictability, innocuousness, inconspicuousness. Experience with objects and emotional states provoked or maintained by objects becomes an automatic response with introverts and extroverts. They alreay know what they like. They are not objective any more. In both cases, objects are elevated to positives or negatives, not considered neutral or passive objects. Objects are quickly forced too be useful or not, to be compatible or not.
Jung’s notion of types is not, therefore, that of the popular view.The popular view wants to push the relationship to objects to an extreme, in order to reveal the inner workings of the introvert or extrovert. This push by popular observers of the types is frustrated by the fact that everyone and not just the types deal with relationships to objects. Inevitably, these objects often confound the average person. Based on a person’s response to an object, the person may have a well-established set of criteria or values but not know how to decide about the object, fear judging it, unable to decide in the definitive way that the introvert or extravert can decide.
Jung’s close study of historical personalities and how their relationships to objects works is both logical and startling. We tend to think of ideas and beliefs as larger than one person, but Jung shows how cultural tendencies that are taken as universals, embraced by common consensus, can change suddenly when the ideas are seen as objects and are elevated by s strong and extrovert personality to the status of real and necessary, an “introvert” function. This application to real historical examples is the subject for a future entry.
Jung identified other spectra besides the extroversion/introversion that is the most familiar “type.” Ultimately, there is no “type,” only our response to objects. Taking a knock-off test like Myers-Briggs will not reveal deep psychology, the unconscious, or even the superficial personality. Reality will consist of managing the subjective and objective, in assigning the environment of each person to social, cultural, and psychological factors, before we can adequately judge the impact of any given object in any given life.