Jung's bent universe

Jungian personality types
Personality traits are described in Jung's personality code as letters are biopolar in that they represent opposing traits along a linear measure.  They measure the distance along a pole an individual tends to that trait, and away from the opposing trait.  Jung described introversion and extraversion as the key polar traits and refered to them as attitudes; they comprise the first letter of the code.  The next two letters in the code measure sensing versus intuition, and feeling versus thinking; Jung referred to them as functions.  The final pole, perceiving versus judging, comes from the Myers-Briggs typographic model, and is also a function.

Poles
For Jung, an attitude "plays the principal role in an individual's adaptation or orientation to life" (1921, para. 1).  The two factors for this pole, extraversion and introversion, describe how a person draws mental energy.  The extravert draws mental energy from the surrounding environment, or from a crowd..  The introvert draws mental energy internally from the ideas that develop within his mind.  The mental energy, or "psychic energy," is called libido in Jung's model.  An individual's approach to life, or attitude, is determined by his prefered way to obtain libido; either externally from the surrounding environment, or interally from personal thoughts (Jung, 1976).



Libido: Pyschic nutrition
Jung describes the need for libido as a driving force, or what BF Skinner might think of as a hunger; libido is effectively nutrition for the mind.  Jung describes the extravert as absorbing llibido from the surrounding environment by attaching to it as an "object."  To Jung, the extravert is, hence, objective, as the psychic energy is based on surrounding reality.  The introvert, conversely, develops this nutrition within his mind from the "subject" of his thoughts; the introvert is subjective to Jung, and his psychic metabolism (to extend the nutrition analogy) is synthesis.

Bi-poles as a "bent universe"
Jung is emphatic that mental health hinges on a person's adaptability along the poles of his bipolar model.  Thinking problems may result for extraverts when they are overwhelmed by the information that they pull in, whereas introverts may attempt to "coerce facts" to resemble a preconceived image that they have created (Jung, 1921, para. 87).  When individuals tend to extremes along either pole, and neglect the qualities of the other end of the pole, they will very likely compensate for the trait of the pole they have neglected (Jung, 1976, p. 3) and move towards the counter-pole (p. 291).  His three pole model can be thought of as a "bent universe" because those at polar extremes will ultimately compensate in some way.  In his "bent universe," the extreme extrovert cannot help but return to the subject of his thoughts, or his "soul" (p. 293).  In the opposite polar direction, the introvert cannot help but crash into reality, or the "object" that defines surrounding reality.  If the extravert is intent on his attachment to the object (as the participant self-reported that he has experienced at times), then he creates a mythology that serves as a substitute for introverted thought, or the subject.  However, if he is not careful, the compensating restoration of the "soul" may ultimately destroy the material benefits that extroversion may have provided (p. 340).  In a similar sense, the extreme introvert creates a facsimile of reality that Jung describes as a "dream" (p. 169).

Jung's two other bipolar measures describe how an individual functions with respect to his role. They are "function-types" (1976, p. 330), and describe how an individual collects information and makes decisions based on how he "attends.".  Information can be collected through the normal senses, which is sensing, or through a "sixth sense" (J. Dyce, personal communication, n.d.) of intuition.  Intuition is how the unconscious perceives.  Decisions can be made logically and in a detached way, or in a personal value-oriented way, creating the thinking/feeling bipole.

The fourth pole from the Myers-Briggs model adds a third functional dimension that describes prefered lifestyle in terms of either judgement, which is rigidly well-ordered and highly-organized, or perception, which is flexible as it allows for spontaneity, providing an ability to shift between tasks.

Plato and Aristotle: Jung's approach to subjective- and objectiveness
To help illustrate the fundamental importance of the introvert/extravert pole, and to show that Jung's theory was not entirely his own invention, but was based on others' supporting ideas, including the classics, Jung inserted a passage by Heine at the very beginning of the book describing Plato in introverted terms, and Aristotle in extraverted terms.  Plato, in Heine's passage, is mystical, and hence subjective in Jung's model; and Aristotle is orderly and practical (presumably with respect to information organization).  Aristotle is openly attached to the "object" of his surrounding environment, and hence an extravert and objective.  This assessment contradicts the common perception of both Plato and Aristotle being objective, but in different ways.  Plato's Forms created a basis for orderly science, and Aristotle's disciplined observational approach contributed to the scientific method.  Both of them are further perceived as highly objective because of their resistance to sentimentality.  The Similarminds questionaire makes a similar distinction with questions that define a rational/sentimental bipole ("Personality Test," n.d.).  Jung further contradicts the common perception of Plato as objective by attaching the concept of "empathy," and hence sentimentality, to objectivity (p. 48), and by showing that empathy's antithesis, abstraction, is used by the introvert to synthesize a version of the world within his mind--as he may be afraid of the real world (p. 505).  As Jung's ideas are the basis for the instrument of this assessment, this conclusion by Jung underscores the necessity to assess the individual in the context of his personality and experiences, and not in the context of contemporary society with its many preconceptions. 

Sense/intuition and thinking/feeling
Jung's two functional bipoles, sense/intuition and thinking/feeling, also obey the rules of his "bent universe" that forces compensation at the extremes.  Intuition can be thought of as an added, or sixth sense.  This implies that unintuitive individuals who are sense-oriented rely on superficial cues from the surrounding environment, and hence may not be able to interpret the meanings of surrounding phenomena, and therefore are distanced, and possibly afraid (p. 505).  "Sense," therefore, might be counter-intuitively interpreted as an introverted pole and "intuition" an extroverted, and also empathic, pole.  Jung self-debates the extra- and introverted nature of the sensing/intuition bipole, but agrees that intuition is important, along with empathy, for understanding others (p. 473).  Thinking and feeling are even easier to explain; thinking is the domain of the introvert.  Jung describes it as thinking of subjects, and, as thinking is the polar opposite to feeling, the thinking/feeling bipole further attaches Plato to subjectivity.

In Psychological Types, Jung describes a dichotomous bipolar model of opposing traits that not only explains personality phenomena along the established poles used by the Myers-Briggs, but introduces many related descriptors that can create a flexible matrix that is applicable to diverse therapeutic scenarios (Jung, 1976).  Jung built his theory by critically examining other theories being developed during the early 20th Century, and further supports it with classical anecdotes.  Jung's writing is self-critical in a way that creates possibilities for alternate analyses, which allowed the participant to modify his interpretation of the intuitive/sensing bipole to improve his self-assessment.  Psychological Types gives advanced insights into the relationships between many psychological concepts.  The most important of these are empathy, abstraction, and conceptualization (Jung, 1976, p 48), as he reported seeing these concepts being implemented to define emotional intelligence.

References

Jung, C. (1921). Psychological types. Retrieved November 23, 2010, from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Jung/types.htm

Jung, C., (1976). Psychological Types. Princeton: Princeton University Press

Vacha-Haase, T., & Thompson, B. (2002). Alternative ways of measuring counselees' Jungian psychological-type preferences. Journal of Counseling & Development, 80(2), 173. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Was CG Jung a racist?

I felt encouraged to absorb more of Jung's ideas when I found a possible relationship between his archetypes and the evolution of language and the "deeper" meanings of words.

I found much about mythology in his writing (in fact I found it overwhelming), but attempted to stay on-topic with respect to his typology.  Nonetheless, I found his bipole approach (which was not his alone) to be so dimensional as to be "cosmic."

I found two of his three measures to be simple enough; it was the "sensing/intuitive" measure that took more effort to grasp.  He shows in different places how this axis can be either intro- or extraverted.   I found a racist component of his thinking that I feel would be different if he lived today, and would alter his "cosmos."

Jung makes statements in Psychological Types (1976) linking both intuition and extraversion to the "primitive" person in a negative way that was influenced by his time and culture.  They would have opposite meaning if he lived to day, as the third quote seems highly-racist as it compares natives to monkeys, and presumably would be different:

• "unconscious demands of the extravert have an essentially primitive, infantile, egocentric character" (p. 571),
• "intuition is characteristic of the infantile and primitive psychology" (p. 454), and
• "a bush-man had a little boy whom he loved with the tender monkey-love of primitives" (p. 227).

In congruence with his time, he viewed natives seemingly as a lower species.  If this perception were to be altered throughout his writing, as it would probably be if he lived today, then the sensing ability of the "primitive" would become revised as the intuitive knowledge of the shaman.

I think this would alter the sensing/intuition bipole, and possibly the typology's use in instruments today.  As is, I believe that he was very much "on the fence" with respect to this and other related concepts such as empathy, abstraction, and conceptualization.  Perhaps he was forming a better view of these concepts unconsciously while he was expressing views of his time that included some racism.  I just don't see him as a racist, as racists, in my experience, tend be wholly ignorant and, in at least one case, decidedly bipolar (which mean in the other sense).

Empathy model outline

A "clean room" approach to emotional communication


This introduction:

It is difficult to write about psychology because the traditional theories (which are still philosophy-based, using 2500 year old material) still confound observed phenomena, often obviously, such as in the cases of Freud and Watson. I wrote this synopsis of my "clean room" implementation of the empathy model primarily to focus and refresh the learning.  My learning, counseling psychology (masters degree), is being shared on the Wikiversity.

Resource model

• Emotional communication works to create a communication matrix that allows for the collaboration and mutual support that is found in higher organisms.
• Responsibility grows from emotional connections within the environment of family and community in humanity and with many animal groups.
• Those with dysfunctional emotional communication systems, who are unable to collaborate to create resources, are forced to group to use predatory strategies.  They often create predatory cooperation group systems that rely on digital communication (Humbolt squid).  This is organismic fate, which is, in nature, a mistake in the genetic code in higher animals, and especially in humans.  Capital structure, the dominant component of modern human society, leverages emotional communication dysfunction to develop predatory strategies to obtain resources violently such as through theft and through war.

Evolutionary empathy

• The emotion and emotional communication are ancient and below (or behind) the neocortex (mouse, cortex, PAG)
• Higher empathy appears to be in brain networks, such as in the pyramid cells of the neocortex, and  leads in two directions:

1. Compassion for others outside of the immediate family to the community and on to distant people--"intangible" relationships
2. Collaboration becomes so sophisticated combining analytic and emotionally communicative facilities to combine reason and affection into a technical responsibility-based desired ability to create resources

• In the opposite direction, the unempathic forces take this product, remove the community of knowledge and, in the process, natural responsibility so as to be able to direct  technology toward a predatory purpose: to take other's resources.  In recent centuries this has been in factories and mechanized warfare, and, more recently, to reduce productive society to a pure consumption mode.

Natural organisms are the successful result of evolution; organisms that are not finely-tuned in the ways produced by evolution to meet needs required by the environment are genetically defective and hence dysfunctional.  In higher organisms, emotional communication is the most important evolutionary refinement, and, in nature, emotional communication dysfunctions result in social isolation, and hence far fewer opportunities to reproduce.  This allows natural organisms to keep moving forward in evolution, and keeps social cohesion strong.  In contrast to nature, modern human society does not isolate the emotionally dysfunctional, and, in many cases, attempts to force them to become successful, which tends to place those with emotional communication defectives in control positions--with consistently bad and sometimes horrific results.  Further, they are often encouraged to reproduce for reasons of spirituality or human capital, which assures that future generations will be affected.

The model was initially based on empathy basics such elephant family observations and the monkey colonies of Cayo Santiago where members who unable to interact collaboratively, effectively forcing them to steal to survive, are marginalized. 

Predatory relationships

• Predatory-normal: victimize through a relationship such as an abusive marriage.
• Predatory-predatory: find normally empathic people to exploit. 

Someone may enter into a predatory-normal relationship, have children, and then find and marry a fellow-predator, a better "match," who can be a partner in an exploitative business.  Since predator-predator relationships lack the empathy that defines normal relationships, they are dependent on a resource stream that can very likely be defined in terms of capital.  Their relationships with their children will fall into the same patterns. 

The normal, or victim, in the relationship will often attempt to "fix" the predatory partner with the misconception that the predator has within the components necessary for normalcy, and will attempt to re-write the predators thinking, especially since a mutual relationship is more logical, and hence beneficial.  This is encouraged by capital structure, and especially by religion, which often views all as having a "holy" spirit or soul.  For capital, the goal is the development of valued human assets, or resources.  The process, which can be thought of as mapping, will often work temporarily, but the predator's basic mode will always return, forcing the normal partner to try again.  In effect, the normal partner "paints a pretty picture" of the relationship, a process which, in fact, is a cognitive disorder.

Children will attempt to reconstruct these defective relationships in future relations such as marriage if the consciousness has been mapped by a predatory parent.  With time, they see the ill-logic and marry appropriately.

Not surprisingly, as we know that societal structures have been refined from family structure, modern civilization often fits this pattern especially as we find it in Plato's Republic.

Mediated glandular responses

• Creating benefits through good work, especially through collaboration, produces the benefits of life, and with them good feelings that are the result of positive glandular responses to that beneficial work.
• Bad results produce bad responses that are negative glandular responses

The emotional benefit from the effort of developing physical benefits, especially through collaboration, gives people (and perhaps most higher organisms) a good feeling that is provided by the glandular systems of the brain in parallel to the physical benefits.  People who are consistently unable to obtain the benefits of life (possibly because they are not connected to the normal community process of creating benefits such as occurs in the case of an emotional communication dysfunction), will often attempt to use some means to create the same good feeling that accompanies natural benefits.  They attempt to mediate a response synthetically to obtain the same positive glandular response that beneficial activity provides.  Gambling is an example, as a gambler pays a lot for the opportunity to be able to feel the benefits of winning, despite having to lose many times to do so.  "Hard" drug users short-circuit the entire benefit-creation process by producing the glandular response directly, such as with a chemical injection.  In some cases they may take this mediated path this because their brains cannot produce positive glandular responses through any other means, such as through beneficial success. 

Poverty often precludes the ability to succeed, and hence the ability to naturally "feel good" as a benefit of collaborative success.  This, logically, would make it a cause for mediated and short-curciuted attempts to create positive glandular responses.  Poverty should then result in high levels of gambling and "hard" drug use.

Emotional VS character (digital) communication

• Conceptual versus sequential
• White matter versus purely executive function

The necessity, or urgency, of predator-victim model pushes the most important component aside, which is the underlying difference between the two.  Normalcy, or empathy, is the goal of evolution, which all you can find in nature.  Normalcy has slipped in humanity to possibly 80% with 20% only able to function in an exploitative mode.  Why?  In our time, cocaine, or powered narcissism, is probably the most to blame.  Throughout history humanity has been slipping away from natural appreciation, which is highly complex, to calculating thought, which is sequential.  Sequential roughly relates to linear thought, which is how sequential-only thinkers think of their thought, but it is not linear.  It is prone to error causing dead stops in logic, but continues in the crooked path that normal people are expected to accept--or else.

Sequential thought could be considered executive function, and complex thought all the other parts of the brain usually detected as white matter.  White matter is insulating fat on neurons that allows neural electrical activity to accelerate, so complex thought could be said to require a pick-up in processing speed to achieve the "critical mass" necessary for complexities such as higher emotions.  This is described as empathy and is usually attributed to the specialized spindle and mirror neurons, but many, if not most, animals have empathy without these neurons and interrelate without them, such mice and our pets do.  Researchers find it in the more ancient parts of the brain, and we find sequential communication in the very ancient Humbolt Squid with its humboldt squid chromatophores.  Those without the ability to reach neural "critical mass" are unable to conceive of what it is and attempt to thought purely in terms of sequential, usually calculating thought.  The vast healthy majority (80-90%) that is able to reach "critical mass" tends to take it for granted.

Mechanical and synaptic descriptions: Lewin and Boyton 

• The activity is in the spaces between us, much like Lewin attempts to describe using physics, but for corporate organizational psych, a behaviorist area.
• Extensions of that into person to person connections in psychoanalysis, or transference: Boyton

Constructivism

• The community of knowledge is where home is
• Loss of the natural and historical community of knowledge leads to moral collapse and mental illness
  

The economic phenomena of "churning" forces constant job-change, and in many cases, constant migration, guaranteeing the destruction of the established communities of knowledge that define human society and culture.  The churning effect results in the creation, or "development," of synthetic communities that are linked to non-productive mall-type commercial centers that attempt to imitate culture as a lure for resources for consumption.  Missing entirely is the basis of human collaboration, and hence responsibility and morality.  What is substituted for morality is synthetic: the rule of law, which, of course, does nothing to support mental health.  As this type of capital construct invariably lacks a productive component and functions purely on consumption, it has to locate remote resources to exploit to prevent economic collapse.

Counter-empathy
Un-empathy, the lack of emotional communication abilities, or emotional communication dysfunction (ECD) which is a noun and static.
Anti-empathy, action based on this dysfunction, which is the obtaining of resources by taking instead of by contributing collaboratively. 

The model tends to define anti-empathic phenomena in evolutionary terms, which would point to DNA.  Sociology and psychology more more demanding; the negative results of anti-empathy would have to be described in social or mental context.  Following the resources component of the model, it is likely that aggressiveness would result from a perception that resources may not be available, or that there is some threat, probably as a result of resource unavailability.  Since most organisms are healthy, including humans, this perception will likely be a misconception; in other words, paranoia.  Within the context of the Internet, where the model is being developed, there have been examples (that were easily documented) of paranoia being used to actually generate small examples of humanity's two big problems: bias and hate.

Society moves from a mutually supportive community to an un-empathic capital environment where controllers exclude normally collaborative people (Lewis Mumford's democratic technic) who created the benefits society into desperation.  Their contributions, or innovations, are transferred to the unempathic, Plato's upper layers, and the process is imitated with exponentially declining success usually protected with misinformation, preserved with exclusion strategies such as the high stakes testing of human capital systems (Confucian/Mandarin testing), and if not that, violence.

Layered Model
This is a gift from recent information technology; the Internet protocol stack model that describes, in abstraction, simultaneous yet different events, and sometimes seemingly unrelated events strike on each levels necessary for Internet communication.  Each has its own nature and purpose, yet each layer operates as a component of every action. Comparison of the "IP stack" with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

As a teacher in an autistic school, I learned to think of external human functions as abilities, and the underlying mechanisms as facilities that enable these functions, or give people abilities.  Most obviously missing in the severely autistic is speech; Chomsky describes speech ability as the output of underlying functionality that is somehow independent within the mind (and brain). 

The layered approach to digital Internet communication can be use to show how each of the interrelating components of each mental action can be abstracted into layers, starting from the very lowest neural activity and moving upwards to the point that the mental activity is communicated. , from the neural layers (which are analogous to circuits in many ways), up through the emotional layers, out to the surrounding environment (where emotional actions influence others), and ultimately upward to influence to the nature of human society.  From there a layered model can be used to show how actions affect the surrounding environment and ultimately society.  Healthy thoughts initiate with the actions of well-functioning neurons, and ultimately positively influence the surrounding environment. Likewise, badly-formed thoughts arising from poorly-functioning neurology will have unhealthy effects on the surrounding environment.  The model can abstract the effects of defective neurology in important places to show how they can, and often do, have exceptionally bad results for the World.

They layered, or stack, approach quickly brings the model to the sociological level.  Large organizations typically lack empathy as organizational control requires that executives may have to exploit people for the resources necessary to keep very large structures growing to offset the inefficiency caused by their overbearing managerial superstructures.  Within large, and sometimes small organizations, managers are required to have a cold approach to others as they may have to fire them.  In general, the empathy of an organization is proportional to the distance from people of its supporting foundation to the control center at the top, but small organizations are in no way immune.  Empathy quickly disappears within the first few layers of a controlling superstructure, or capital structure.  This was described in Michael Moore's Roger and Me.

Facilities (neural functional systems) produce abilities (neural constructs) that facilitate (predispose) unique actions to allow a person to produce a self (self-actualization).  The ability to speak leverages emotional communication, but does not define it.  The use of speech for emotional communication lies above the emotional constructs that utilize it for emotional communication, so, in a sense, the ability to speak combines both underlying speech facilities and expressive abilities.  The constructs that utilize speech can use other communication abilities, or channels, such as eye contact and touch.

Missing mental facilities result in mental disabilities, but, in the empathic model, mental disabilities are only limitations if they are so deep that they actually prevent the development of empathic constructs, and hence prevent emotional communication within the social environment.  A person may be disabled in significant ways, including communication abilities such as speech, but if they can develop and reflect emotion communication constructs, that is, to communicate empathically, they can always rely on the community support that comes from the responsibility of empathic people.

As an example, Down's syndrome victims have nothing wrong with them from the perspective of the model because they typically have an ability, and often a strong desire, to connect emotionally.  What we see as a problem is that they are missing an executive function facility that helps us moderate friendliness and use caution specifically to assure that we are not victimized by organisms that have no empathy: in humanity, the anti-empathic.

However, there is a problem with empathy.  Empathic people, through higher empathy, often attempt to provide support to the emphatically dysfunctional to empower them, usually as an extension of religion or spirituality combined with concepts of human capital.  As a result, people who outwardly appear normal, may in fact be disabled in terms of emotional communication, and despite this will be encouraged, or even forced, to attempt to succeed beyond the scope of their natural abilities.  The misconception is that people with empathic defects can be empowered to be responsible in the sense that they can be made to contribute to the capital structure.  As they cannot fully function at expected levels, they become angry when they are pushed beyond their natural abilities, and even if they have a degree of natural empathy, once they are empowered beyond their capabilities, they effectively become cruel.

Implementation
The empathy model is fairly easy to implement.  As a resource model, problems, in the most general form, result from someone, or a cooperative group, attempting to obtain resources non-collaboratively as a predator; someone else is being victimized.  This can be anywhere, including the family, as family members are sometimes thought of, by people lacking empathy, as assets.  FGM in ancient African nations is an example. 

Extending this idea of a person as a family asset is human capital; capital structures see humans if it can profit from them, and liabilities if it cannot.  Most institutions are structured around this, and as such, are looking to benefit people so that they can "contribute" to the national (and now global) capital structure's growth.  Often those who cannot succeed in similar school-type didactic structures, are pushed so hard that it is the "desire" of the capital structure for their success that is the cause of their problems; and hence the saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

If it is difficult to find an actual resource benefit for abuse, then the next step is to look for a mediated "feeling" of benefit, or glandular response; many may be abusive because abuse has benefited them in the past, given them the good feeling of success, and they reproduce the feeling by repeating the action; this is a sadistic mediated glandular response.

The paranoia component has been addressed for several millennia; forgiveness is necessary to prevent the paranoia resulting from past transgressions, or "trespasses" as Christians say, from continuing a cycle of paranoia.

In all cases, whether predatory, victimized, or simply normally happy, happiness is dependent on a productive position that is within the scope of the person.