This is the fourth Chapter from the online book: Living Ethics: The Way of Wholeness. See: 1) How Should We Live? 2) Ethics and Civilization 3) Worldview and Ethics
Donivan Bessinger, MD
As Socrates taught, Know thyself.
One’s view of the world derives from one’s view of oneself in relationship to the world of society and to the world of knowledge. Since antiquity, great teachers have stressed the importance of the understanding of one’s self, whether for religious enlightenment or as the basis for knowledge. For example, in Taoist scripture from the sixth century BCE, we read,
“He who knows others is wise; He who knows himself is enlightened.” (1)
Jesus taught that “The kingdom of God is within you.” (2) A late fourth century source amplifies the passage: “The kingdom of heaven is in the midst of you, and whoever knows himself will find it.” (3)
Self awareness and self knowledge have also been seen as critical in philosophy as well. Socrates had the distinction of being named by the oracle at Delphi as the wisest of the Greeks. Of course, Socrates was wise enough to know that he was wisest because he knew this: “One thing only do I know, and that is that I know nothing.”
For Socrates, the beginning of knowledge is to doubt. One must particularly doubt one’s cherished beliefs, lest they interfere with the precision of one’s questioning. (After all, if one is confident of one’s beliefs, one will have no reason to fear examining them!) As Will Durant summarizes Socrates, “There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself.” (4)
“Know thyself” was the cornerstone of Socrates’ teaching. His “gadfly” method involved relentlessly needling students with questions, pressing them a premise at a time. When they eventually came up with the answer, they had no choice but to admit its logic. Socrates would then suggest that they had had the answer within themselves all the time. Socrates had only drawn the answer from them by defining questions that made the necessary precise distinctions. Thus, self-inquiry with appropriately precise questions was the foundation of knowledge.
One recalls that for Descartes too, the acquisition of knowledge builds on doubt. Thereby he discovered that existence is undoubtable, because the act of thinking proves existence. All must be doubted, but the process takes us back to self-awareness, to knowledge of existence, and beyond that, conscious reason cannot go. Knowledge, as we have defined it here and as incorporated into the scientific worldview, is the product of reason and reflection, and lives in the realm of the conscious. Knowledge is the product of mind rather than psyche. (5)
However, since the universal worldview seeks to encompass all reality, it is concerned with the unconscious as well as conscious. Both are important in shaping one’s worldview. To understand ourselves, and to understand the process of forming our worldview, we must consider psyche as well as mind.
The psyche plays the major role in formulating the personality. The psyche determines our attitude toward the external world, especially the way we relate to other humans. The psyche determines the way we function in receiving, reacting to, and processing data from the senses. Thus, the psyche is one of the major forces that “grinds the lens” of our personal worldview.
The classification of personality types devised by Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung (1875-1961) has been a major contribution to the understanding of the relationship between natural individual differences, and will help illustrate the complexities of the psychic contribution (6) in developing one’s worldview. In a later chapter, we will consider Jung’s general model of the dynamics of the unconscious in its normal functioning; here we consider only the typologic scheme.
The terms introvert and extravert are the most familiar of Jung’s descriptive terms, and have come to be used widely in ordinary language. These terms define whether the attitude of the personality is oriented more toward the outer world or more toward the inner world. This is the attitude type. There are other descriptive terms, also using ordinary language. They designate the personality’s functioning in perceiving relationships between items of information, and in processing the information. These are the function types.
The following description gives a basic introduction to the concept of types. These are additional axes that help determine the operation of normal personality and thus help determine one’s worldview. It is important to recognize that our goal is to present a brief summary for our own purposes. We cannot begin to consider the full range of implications for modern psychologic theory. In fact, it is well to remember throughout the book that our goal is to review the elements of the universal worldview panoramically, as in a primer.
First, some general comments that apply to all of the characteristics. All of the characteristics designated by the types are present in each person. Further, the characteristics are paired into opposites. Two opposite characteristics are not typically equally strong. One of the pair is strong; the other, weak. The stronger is commonly called the differentiated or superior function; the weaker, the undifferentiated or inferior. However, one must remember that in no sense does superior or inferior mean that one is naturally or morally better or worse than the other. All of the several personality types designate normal functioning and represent variations among normal people. There is a spectrum along the scale of opposites, and people vary in the intensity of their characteristics. Of course, functions may become so exaggerated as to become pathological, that is, unhealthy. (7) The types apply to each sex, and to members of all cultures.
The Attitude Type expresses the direction of movement of a person’s psychic energy, that is, the general orientation of the person’s interest. The characteristic refers to the person’s attitude toward the object to which one is related.
The introvert’s major interest is directed within. Jung says that it is as if the person’s attitude seeks to draw energy away from the outer object in order to keep the object from gaining the greater power. The introvert typically is described as shy, reserved, introspective, inscrutable. The extravert may well see the introvert as closed off, unsociable, egocentric and conceited.
The extravert’s major interest is directed outside the psyche. It is as if the person’s attitude seeks to flow out to energize the outer object. The object (the other) is the center of interest around which one orients one’s own subjective attitude. The extravert is typically open, sociable, friendly, and approachable. The introvert may consider the extravert to be shallow and exhausting.
The Function Types. There are four function types, forming two sets of opposites. One set designates the mechanisms for gaining information; the other designates the mechanisms for processing it. Jung designates the perceiving set (information input) as the “non-rational” function.
One may perceive information through sensation or through intuition. To perceive through sensation is to receive data directly by the sense organs. To perceive through intuition is to “see” relationships, possibilities and meanings within data; however, these intuited relationships cannot be perceived by the sense organs.
The other set of functions designates the mechanisms for processing information. These are the judging or “rational” functions. One may process information through thinking or through feeling. Thinking is used in its ordinary meaning of rational mental process. Feeling however refers to the mental process of valuing that is also rational. It does not refer to touching or other tactile input (“It feels sticky”), or to intuitive input (“I feel that it’s so”). One may avoid confusion by considering it the valuing function.
These four function types are present in each of us, and we each must use each of them some of the time. Nevertheless, we typically prefer one of the functions in each set. For perceiving, it is habitual and easier for us to favor sensation or intuition. We cannot use both at the same time. Strength in one usually means weakness in the other. Similarly, for judging, it is habitual and easier to favor thinking or valuing.
Auxiliary Function. The types are measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a test which scores preferences. That test also scores an auxiliary function, which expresses the fact that one set of functions habitually predominates over the other. If the rational set is stronger, a person is scored as a judging type; if the non-rational is stronger, as perceiving type.
The scores of all the functions determine the personality type, which is expressed by four letters, such as “INTJ” or “ESFP”, designating the dominant one of each of the paired functions: Introvert-Extravert, ‘Ntuition-Sensation, Thinking-Feeling, Judging-Perceiving. Thus there are sixteen possible variations, or personality types.
Obviously, there are many implications for studying human relationships. For example, the INTJ person and the ESFP person may very well have difficulty getting along on a balanced long-term basis unless they compromise and begin to strengthen some of the less-differentiated functions.
Furthermore, and more pertinent to us, there are also important differences in the way each develops the worldview. First, the introvert and the extravert approach and observe the object in different ways. The Intuitive person and the Sensing person find out about the object in different ways. The Thinking person and the Feeling person judge the object in different ways. Consider Jung’s comments:
Two people see the same object, but they never see it in such a way that the images they receive are absolutely identical. (8)
We must not forget … that perception and cognition are not purely objective, but are also subjectively conditioned. The world exists not merely in itself, but also as it appears to me. … By overvaluing our capacity for objective cognition we repress the importance of the subjective factor, which simply means a denial of the subject. But what is the subject? The subject is man himself—we are the subject. (9)
Developing the systems worldview requires the participation of all functions. Sensing the world is necessary, but in this case the object is so complex that the sensation function is easily overwhelmed. The intuitive function must become highly valued.
Processing the information requires both thinking and valuing functions, as our continued emphasis on the importance of both the conscious and the unconscious suggests. Developing a sense of the universe as a whole system requires the function of the person as a whole system.
Copyright 2000 by Donivan Bessinger. All rights reserved.
Next Chapter: World as System
More by Donivan Bessinger, MD
References:
(1) “HE WHO KNOWS OTHERS IS WISE”—Tao-Te Ching. See The Portable World Bible, R. O. Ballou, editor. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. p 548
(2) “THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU”—Luke 17:21 (KJV)
(3) “WHOEVER KNOWS HIMSELF WILL FIND IT”—Oxyrhynchus Papyrus, cited in Gospel Parallels, A Synopsis of the First Three Gospels, B. Throckmorton Jr, editor. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1979. p 125 fn.—Compare the second-century (?) gnostic Gospel of Thomas: “…the kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known…”. See The Other Bible, W. Barnstone, editor. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984. p 300.
(4) “THERE IS NO REAL PHILOSOPHY”—Will Durant. The Story of Philosophy. New York: Washington Square Press/Pocket Books, 1953. page 6.
(5) ‘MIND’ RATHER THAN ‘PSYCHE’—The word psyche is sometimes used to define that part of a human being which is not body. For that concept, I will generally use such terms as “total psyche” or “total self”. However, psyche is Greek for soul. Here I use “psyche” to refer to the unconscious, and “mind” (Greek nous) to refer to the realm of conscious mental activity.
(6) PSYCHIC CONTRIBUTION—”Psychic” means pertaining to the psyche (the unconscious) or perhaps to the total psyche. In this book, it is never used to refer to “mental powers” claimed by practitioners of the occult.
(7) FUNCTIONS MAY BECOME SO EXAGGERATED—See first an introductory essay: Jung. “A Psychological Theory of Types” in MMSS p 74.—For clinical descriptions, see: CGJ. “Psychological Types: General Description of the Types” (1923) in PJ p 178 ff., or: CW 6.
(8) “TWO PEOPLE SEE THE SAME OBJECT”—CGJ, PJ p 229
(9) “WE MUST NOT FORGET”—ibid. p 230