Carl Gustav Jung

“ Whilst sympathy represents the warmth of passion which carries it into the presence of the object in order to assimilate it and penetrate it with emotional values; abstraction, on the other hand, despoils the object of all that could recall life, and grasps it by purely intellectual thought, crystallised and fixed into the rigid forms of law,—the universal, the typical. Bergson also makes use of these images of crystallisation, solidification, etc., to illustrate the essence of intellectual abstraction. ”

“ The expressions, therefore, used by James, show clearly that the diversity of types is the result of a different localisation of the libido; this libido is the magic power in the depth of our being, which, following the personality, carries it sometimes towards internal life, and sometimes towards the objective world. ”

“ The polar opposite of sympathy is abstraction. The impulse of abstraction is conceived by Warringer “as the result of a great internal conflict of the human soul in the presence of the external world, and from the religious standpoint, it corresponds to a strong transcendental colouring of all the representations man has made to himself of reality.” We recognise clearly in this definition the primordial tendency to introversion. To the introverted type the universe does not appear beautiful and desirable, but disquieting, and even dangerous ”

“ It is not essential for him to depend upon the object, and to find in it his fill of subjective enjoyment, but to protect his own individuality and to guarantee it against the hostile influences of the environment. Whilst Freud’s psychology has for its predominant note the centrifugal tendency, which demands its happiness and satisfaction in the objective world, in that of Adler the chief rôle belongs to the centripetal movement, which tends to the supremacy of the subject, to his triumph and his liberty, as opposed to the overwhelming forces of existence. ”

“ The existence of two mental affections so opposite in character as hysteria and dementia praecox, in which the contrast rests on the almost exclusive supremacy of extraversion or introversion, suggests that these two psychological types may exist equally well in normal persons, who may be characterised by the relative predominance of one or other of the two mechanisms. Psychiatrists know very well that before either illness is fully declared, patients already present the characteristic type, traces of which are to be found from the earliest years of life. ”

“ We say that he is extraverted when he gives his fundamental interest to the outer or objective world, and attributes an all-important and essential value to it: he is introverted, on the contrary, when the objective world suffers a sort of depreciation, or want of consideration, for the sake of the exaltation of the individual himself, who then monopolising all the interest, grows to believe no one but himself worthy of consideration. ”

“ The other traits which James depicts in this type follow naturally from its fundamental character. The tender-minded man, he says, is intellectual, idealist, optimist, religious, partisan of free-will, a monist, and a dogmatist. All these qualities betray the almost exclusive concentration of the libido upon the intellectual life. This concentration upon the inner world of thought is nothing else than introversion. ”

“ In the eyes of these philosophers principles are never of such value as facts; they can only reflect and describe the sequence of phenomena and cannot construct a system. Thus their theories are exposed to contradiction under the overwhelming accumulation of empirical material. Psychic reality for the positivist limits itself to the observation and experience of pleasure and pain; he does not go beyond that, nor does he recognise the rights of philosophical thought. ”

“ Herein our type of extraversion is easily recognised. The classics of Ostwald are, on the contrary, slow to react; they produce with much difficulty, are little capable of teaching or of exercising direct personal influence, and lacking enthusiasm are paralysed by their own severe criticism, living apart and absorbed in themselves, making scarcely any disciples, but producing works of finished perfection which often bring them posthumous fame. ”

“ From these general characteristics, the others which James points out logically follow. The positivist is a sensualist, giving greater value to the specific realm of the senses than to reflection which transcends it. He is a materialist and a pessimist, for he knows only too well the hopeless uncertainty of the course of things. He is irreligious, not being in a state to hold firmly to the realities of the inner world as opposed to the pressure of external facts ”

“ And starting from this idea, which is altogether in accord with the spirit of psychoanalysis, divides philosophers into two classes: the “Tender-minded,” who are only interested in the inner life and spiritual things; and the “Tough-minded,” who lay most stress on material things and objective reality. We see that these two classes are actuated by exactly opposite tendencies of the libido: the “tender-minded” represent introversion, the “tough-minded” extraversion.
James says that the tender-minded are characterised by rationalism ”

“ All this clearly indicates that hysteria is characterised by a centrifugal tendency of the libido, [2] whilst in dementia præcox its tendency is centripetal. The reverse occurs, however, where the illness has fully established its compensatory effects. In the hysteric the libido is always hampered in its movements of expansion and forced to regress upon itself; one observes that such individuals cease to partake in the common life, are wrapped up in their phantasies, keep their beds, or are unable to live outside their sick-rooms, etc. ”

“ Here is a great principle, which gains weighty confirmation from the fact that precocious dements reproduce forms and figures which present the closest analogy to those of primitive humanity, not only in their thoughts but also in their drawings. ”

“ From the intellectual point of view the products of hysterical imagination may be accounted for in a very natural and human way in each individual case by the antecedents and individual history of the patient; while the inventions of the precocious dement, on the contrary, are more nearly related to dreams than to normal consciousness, and they display moreover an incontestably archaic tendency, wherein mythological creations of primitive imagination are more in evidence than the personal memories of the patient. ”

“ They care little for facts, and the multiplicity of phenomena hardly embarrasses them at all: they forcibly fit data into their ideal constructions, and reduce everything to their a priori premises. This was the method of Hegel in settling beforehand the number of the planets. ”

“ In my opinion, we owe the best observations on this subject to the philosophy of William James. [3] He lays down the principle that no matter what may be the temperament of a “professional philosopher,” it is this temperament which he feels himself forced to express and to justify in his philosophy. ”

“ This theory limits itself rigidly to empirical facts, and traces back complexes to their antecedents and their elemental factors. It regards the psychological life as being only an effect, a reaction to the environment, and accords the greatest rôle and the largest place to sensation. ”