The Question of Psychological Types: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Hans Schmid-Guisan, 1915-1916 (Philemon Foundation Series)
Hans Schmid-Guisan
Language: English
Pages: 200
ISBN: 0691155615
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In 1915, C. G. Jung and his psychiatrist colleague, Hans Schmid-Guisan, began a correspondence through which they hoped to codify fundamental individual differences of attention and consciousness. Their ambitious dialogue, focused on the opposition of extraversion and introversion, demonstrated the difficulty of reaching a shared awareness of differences even as it introduced concepts that would eventually enable Jung to create his landmark 1921 statement of the theory of psychological types. That theory, the basis of the widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and similar personality assessment tools, continues to inform not only personality psychology but also such diverse fields as marriage and career counseling and human resource management.
This correspondence reveals Jung fielding keen theoretical challenges from one of his most sensitive and perceptive colleagues, and provides a useful historical grounding for all those who work with, or are interested in, Jungian psychology and psychological typology.
presuppositions, but actual difficulties in my daily analytical work with my patients, as well as experiences I have had in my personal relations with other people.” Five years later, he stated in Psychological Types: “This book is the fruit of nearly twenty years’ work in the domain of practical psychology. It grew gradually in my thoughts, taking shape from the countless impressions and experiences of a psychiatrist in the treatment of nervous illnesses, from intercourse with men and women of
inserted later. Corrected from: real. 106 • Correspondence So long as the extravert only feels but does not realize,159 he will naturally have a very inadequate relation to the object, and that is why his “object” will not correspond to reality at all, but will be a subjective fantasy. Someone who just feels does not think, but fantasizes. Through feeling-into, the fantasy is transferred or projected into the “object,” but the actual object is thus distorted. If the object is endowed with
standpoint, even if repetitions cannot be avoided. First of all, we should probably come to an agreement concerning the concept of realization, because I believe we have a completely different view of it. According to your letter, you seem to equate “realization” with “getting to know,” or with “achieving knowledge,” because in order to realize something you must put it outside yourself, objectify it, and can then achieve knowledge about it. I have used “realization” roughly in the sense the word
feeling—as you claim—or even by “juxtaposing the feeling as an object, differentiating oneself 199 Schmid is mistaken, however, because the German expression realisieren, like the English “to realize,” means exactly that in this context: in Geld umwandeln = to turn into cash (Duden, Band 1, 21st ed., 1996). 8 S (28 September 1915) • 121 from it,” but, on the contrary, only by giving oneself completely over to a feeling, by surrendering to it, so that one is and feels “indistinguishable from
introvert is completely extraverted in his thinking, just as the extravert is in his feeling, only the introvert takes possession of the idea of the object, whereas the extravert takes possession of the object itself. The introvert thinks with the object, the extravert feels with it. Both are completely rational. But they find their own irrational (i.e., psychological) truth only in themselves, and with it the true source of energy, 164 • Appendix because life flows from ourselves and not