Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings

Approximately 12-15 percent of the general population are introverted feelers (IF), a temperament type that is subjective and, according to Jung, “continually seeking an image which has no existence in reality, but which it has seen in a kind of vision. It glides unheedingly over all objects that do not fit in with its aim. It strives after inner intensity, for which the objects serve at most as a stimulus” (Psychological Types, para. 638).

The depth of this feeling can only be guessed–it can never be clearly grasped. It makes people silent and difficult of access; it shrinks back like a violet from the brute nature of the object in order to fill the depths of the subject. It comes out with negative judgments or assumes an air of profound indifference as a means of defence. The primordial images are, of course, just as much ideas as feelings. Fundamental ideas, ideas like God, freedom, and immortality, are just as much feeling values as they are significant ideas. Everything, therefore, that we have said about introverted thinking is equally true of introverted feeling, only here everything is felt while there it was thought. But the very fact that thoughts can generally be expressed more intelligibly than feelings demands a more than ordinary descriptive or artistic ability before the real wealth of this feeling can be even approximately presented or communicated to the world. If subjective thinking can be understood only with difficulty because of its unrelatedness, this is true in even higher degree of subjective feeling. In order to communicate with others, it has to find an external form not only acceptable to itself, but capable of arousing a parallel feeling in them.

Thanks to the relatively great inner (as well as outer) uniformity of human beings, it is actually possible to do this, though the form acceptable to feeling is extraordinarily difficult to find so long as it is still mainly oriented to the fathomless store of primordial images. If, however, feeling is falsified by an egocentric attitude, it at once becomes unsympathetic, because it is then concerned mainly with the ego. It inevitably creates the impression of sentimental self-love, of trying to make itself interesting, and even of morbid self-admiration.

Just as the subjectivized consciousness of the introverted thinker, striving after abstraction to the nth degree, only succeeds in intentisfying a thought process that is in itself empty, the intensification of egocentric feeling only leads to inane transports of feeling for their own sake. This is the mystical, ecstatic stage which opens the way for the extraverted functions that feeling has repressed. Just as introverted thinking is counterbalanced by a primitive feeling, to which objects attach themselves with magical force, introverted feeling is counterbalanced by a primitive thinking, whose concretism and slavery to facts surpass all bounds. Feeling progressively emancipates itself from the object and creates for itself a freedom of action and conscience that is purely subjective, and may even renounce all traditional values. But so much the more does unconscious thinking fall a victim to the power of objective reality.

Jung continues to discuss the introverted feeling type (IF) by stating that this type is often silent, inaccessible, hard to understand, hides behind a childish or banal mask, and is inclined to melancholy. In fact, as many as 65-85% of people diagnosed with major depressive episode are introverted feelers. Introverted Feelers value peace and harmony above almost anything else; strong emotions are struck down “with murderous coldness” or nearly paralyze the IF. In women, especially, introverted feeling tends to come off as cold because the strong feeling component is introjected rather than sent outward by projection onto others. In pathological introverted feelers, there is a tendency to overpower or coerce others to get one’s way, “in the form of a domineering influence often difficult to define” (para. 642). Introverted feeling women tend to attract extraverted men, for their power touches the unconscious in the man.

the extraverted feeler

In contrast to the introverted feeler (IF) is the extraverted feeler (EF). The extraverted feeler is just as full of feeling and emotion as the introvert, but often only knows what she feels once it is projected onto an object–or another person. The unconscious (or simply immature) EF only finds something “beautiful” or “good” because others say it is so, which reminds me of the wickedly funny movie Untitled, in which trash and neurotic behavior become art simply because artists and gallery owners agree that it is, in fact, art. According to Jung, “a painting, for instance, is called ‘beautiful’ because a painting hung in a drawing room and bearing a well-known signature is generally assumed to be beautiful, or because to call it ‘hideous’ would presumably offend the family of its fortunate possessor, or because the visitor wants to create a pleasant feeling atmosphere, for which purpose everything must be felt as agreeable” (para. 595).

The music, art, cinema, automotive and fashion industries (and even many churches) owe their existence and success to Extraverted Feelers, who as a flock (or mob, whichever applies) lend feeling-based values to whatever places they frequent or labels they buy. As soon as the object “gains ascendancy,” though, and a person assimilates the object, it loses its charm and power; the EF must move on. This accounts for why some people must buy a new car every few years, must obey the dictates of fashion, are never satisfied with their hair, need new furniture or homes, another spouse, a better set of friends, a neighborhood that props up their sense of self. They can’t settle down because they are not whole within themselves. At their worst and most neurotic, they are nearly entirely object oriented, driven by everything outside themselves. Being needed, used, and then discarded by a narcissistic extraverted feeler is the stuff on which country music and Shakespearean tragedies are built. It is often, I think, what contributes in large part to the terrible problem of child neglect and abuse we have in this country. The EF gone wild is a dreadful sight, for she must infect everyone closest to her with her venom. Because the problem is always “out there,” she is difficult if not impossible to woo to health and wholeness. Like Kali, she eats her young.

The average EF, meaning the ones who are unconscious and therefore abound, seem self-absorbed even in the middle of a crowd. They “do” relationships rather than have them, rarely (if ever) asking how you’re doing, and never waiting for the answer, much less listening to it or understanding it. Though they need other people and are, it might be said, born to serve, as long as they are more unconscious than not, they are incapable of understanding others. Since “without understanding, love is an impossible thing,” in spite of their extraversion, neurotic EF’s may be among the most experientially lonely people on the planet, for they cannot truly love others and offer no real personality receptive of love (Thich Nhat Hanh, True Love).

According to Jung, the wonky EF makes others feel suspicious; we can sense their lack of genuineness, their shallowness. They “no longer make that agreeable and refreshing impression which invariably accompanies genuine feeling; instead, one suspects a pose, or that the person is acting” (Jung, para. 596). Though what he says “may satisfy aesthetic expectations, [. . .] it does not speak to the heart” (ibid.). They fail to inspire regardless of the medium of expression.

At their best, extraverted feelers make the world go ’round. They are born to be teachers, healers, pastors, cheerleaders, and good friends. These, like every other temperament type, they cannot be or do faithfully or in the service to God and their deepest selves unless they become self actualized. Becoming whole always means achieving balance, holding opposites in a perfect tension by transcending them altogether. How this is done when one’s very personality urges one to go wide, not deep, and out, not in–well, that’s the challenge, isn’t it?

The introverted feeler has less of a problem attaching to objects and people, but a larger problem of ruthlessly dissecting herself, ruminating on past and current hurts and slights, trying to save the world one dog or child at a time, and failing–and then masterfully digging herself into a melancholy, Eeyorish pit.

Introverted Thinking: Bah, Humbug!

While emailing a friend about the feeling function, I ran across some of Jung’s words about introverted thinkers in Volume 6 of his Collected Works, titled Psychological Types. Being an introverted thinker myself, I experienced some grim satisfaction in reading what I’m sure Jung didn’t intend to be funny, but which had me smiling wryly and wondering whether I should hang myself today or wait until after Christmas.

Here’s the passage:

[The introverted thinking type] tends to vanish behind a cloud of misunderstanding, which gets all the thicker the more he attempts to assume, by way of compensation and with the help of his inferior functions, an air of urbanity which contrasts glaringly with his real nature. Although he will shrink from no danger in building up his world of ideas, and never shrinks from thinking a thought because it might prove to be dangerous, subversive, heretical, or wounding to other people’s feelings, he is none the less beset by the greatest anxiety if he ever has to make it an objective reality. That goes against the grain. [. . .]

In the pursuit of his ideas he is generally stubborn, headstrong, and quite unamenable to influence. His suggestibility to personal influences is in strange contrast to this. He has only to be convinced of a person’s seeming innocuousness to lay himself open to the most undesirable elements. They seize hold of him from the unconscious. He lets himself be brutalized and exploited in the most ignominious way if only he can be left in peace to pursue his ideas. He simply does not see when he is being plundered behind his back and wronged in practice, for to him the relation to people and things is secondary and the objective evaluation of his product is something he remains unconscious of. Because he thinks out his problems to the limit, he complicates them and constantly gets entangled in his own scruples and misgivings. [. . .]

In his personal relations he is taciturn or else throws himself on people who cannot understand him, and for him this is one more proof of the abysmal stupidity of man. [. . .]

Lovely description, isn’t it? It gets better, but I won’t bore the reader. What interests me about this bit is that only a half hour before reading this passage, I updated my Facebook status to say that I am “wearying myself with principles.” Before that, I had a bout of focused sadness that began last night as I wrapped Christmas presents and has persisted until today. It is all too true that I am suggestible to personal influence, so much so that I have naively believed a few incredible things that have completely changed the course of my life and that of my family, and not in reality for the better. That my husband is also an intuitive thinker only exacerbates the problem, for we believe in principles, possibilities and, yes, magic. It’s not until we are “being plundered behind” our backs “and wronged in practice” that we realize with a shock how stupid we really are about the world as it is, and people as they are. I’m left “brutalized and exploited,” and then weep over my own depletion.

The good news is that only 16% of the population are intuitive thinkers (NT’s). That’s not enough to ruin the world if all 16% never transcend their basic personalities, but it is enough for a support group.

Merely Human

Friends of ours took their family to a resort over the Thanksgiving holidays and let everyone know how much fun they intended to have (and have been having since arriving) by emailing and posting photos of every part of the trip. I find there is nothing like a play-by-play account of the wanton spending of money to inspire envy in even the most enlightened individual, and so it was that I fell from the pious pinnacle of my stupa and became just human enough to adhere pejoratives such as “wanton” and “wasteful” to people whose integrity and good-heartedness I have heretofore had no reason to doubt.

I have never been to a resort over a holiday, you see; nor to Disneyworld or Disneyland or on a cruise or to a foreign country other than to adopt a child that we would then spend over $350,000 to raise, according to U.S. government statistics, while our friends all have the requisite 1.86 perfect children, none of whom came from countries that lack adequate resort facilities, much less require any sort of remedial help, orthodontia, or medical or psychological interventions.

My Facebook status that day stated that being jealous reminded me that I was human, and friends joked about how I needed to be reminded of my humanity. What I meant, though, was that I’m not much given to jealousy or covetousness, for I myself am regularly the object of other people’s projections of failure or success (as the case may be) and know that the reality of what it took to get here and what it takes to live here every day is not enviable or, on the other hand, regrettable because it’s my life: My life that I have chosen a million times and have built for myself over countless moments and which could not have been lived by anyone else.

What this means, of course, is that I chose to live this life. I’m not a victim of my own life, meaning that nobody put a gun to my head or isolated me in a cell or stretched me out for torture until I succumbed and agreed to marry my righteous but pig-headed husband, or have umpteen children, most of whom had already received life’s cruelest psychological, spiritual, and emotional wound in the first hours, weeks, months or years of life, or compelled me to do or be any of the things I regularly regret doing or being because the lives my neighbors live look so much more inviting for their novelty, ease, and ability to inspire envy in me.

It means, too, on a deeper level that when I say I am human, I mean that I’ve caught myself being human: fallen, falling short, less than godly, less than a goddess. I joked in my next Facebook status update that I am usually a goddess, but I wasn’t really joking, for, as St. Paul said, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from ourselves.” People tend to focus on the surpassing power of God part without noticing that Paul wrote that we have this treasure, we have this treasure of the very power of God, the godhead, within us–the same resurrection power that created the universe with a word, impregnated a virgin, and brought Christ out of the grave after three days and three nights. That very power: in me.

Having God ride shotgun in my life means that I was disappointed about the envy I felt, for I’m used to not feeling envious due to a typical lack of attachment to things that had me telling the cleaning ladies a few weeks back not to worry if they broke anything, for it was all destined to perish anyway, and there was nothing in my house that breathes or inspires life into its inhabitants except for the inhabitants themselves, at which they looked at me agape. I had, you see, forgotten that attachment to people is an attachment, too, and projecting my “wish I could’s” onto my friends or children is no less a crime than being attached to the objects in one’s house, for people are not possessions and it is not the job of anyone else to carry my unlived life.

What my jealousy meant, in part, was that I wished I could go to a resort but I couldn’t, because I have Too Many Children and Not Enough Money. But under cross-examination, the witness admits that she could probably afford to go to a resort, go to Paris, buy her 16-year-old a brand new car, or do any manner of things other people do with their money if that were her value or desire. The problem, she further admits, is that she chooses not to value trips to resorts as much as she values the life she has chosen for herself.

The other problem is, of course, that I need someone or something onto whom or which I can project my unlived life so that I’ll continue to have a handy excuse for not living it. Alternatively, I need something to focus on that will keep me from progressing in my career as a goddess who is more attached to the things of the spiritual world than those of this temporal one.

The day I was overcome with jealously, I read this in Jung’s Psychology and the East, and it made me smile with a smile that felt like a death mask because I could see my bias toward the temporal over the eternal:

The externalization of culture may do away with a great many evils whose removal seems most desirable and beneficial, yet this step forward, as experience shows, is all too clearly paid for with a loss of spiritual culture. It is undeniably much more comfortable to live in a well-planned and hygienically equipped house, but this still does not answer the question of who is the dweller in this house and whether his soul rejoices in the same order and cleanliness as the house which ministers to his outer life. The man whose interests are all outside is never satisfied with what is necessary, but is perpetually hankering after something more and better which, true to his bias, he always seeks outside himself. He forgets completely that, for all his outward successes, he himself remains the same inwardly, and he therefore laments his poverty if he possesses only one automobile when the majority have two. Obviously the outward lives of men could do with a lot more bettering and beautifying, but these things lose their meaning when the inner man does not keep pace with them. To be satiated with “necessities” is no doubt an inestimable source of happiness, yet the inner man continues to raise his claim, and this can be satisfied by no outward possessions. And the less this voice is heard in the chase after the brilliant things of this world, the more the inner man becomes the source of inexplicable misfortune and uncomprehended unhappiness in the midst of living conditions whose outcome was expected to be entirely different. The externalization of life turns to incurable suffering, because no one can understand why he should suffer from himself. No one wonders at his insatiability, but regards it as his lawful right, never thinking that the one-sidedness of this psychic diet leads in the end to the gravest disturbances of equilibrium. That is the sickness of Western man, and he will not rest until he has infected the whole world with his own greedy restlessness (para. 962).

As Proverbs 27:20 says, “Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied; nor are the eyes of man ever satisfied.” We’re made with the quality of Never Satisfied because Never Satisfied is in our deepest beings as a sign and emblem of the depths of symbolic spiritual experience to which we can go if we will only dare. Most don’t dare, but remain stuck on a sensual, temporal level that belies a commensurately cavernous spiritual emptiness, the likes of which I recognized in myself with surprise, dread, and awe the day I envied my neighbor’s good fortune.

References

Jung, C. G. (1978). Psychology and the East. (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.), from The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vols. 10, 11, 13, and 18. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.