Carl Jung published his book Psychological Types in 1921, introducing four functions of consciousness: thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition, and the two attitudes through which these four functions are deployed: introversion and extraversion. If one of these functions habitually predominates, it is called our primary or dominant function, which is paired with a secondary or auxiliary function. It was Jung who taught us that a rational function (thinking or feeling) is paired with an irrational function (sensation or intuition) to develop a conscious orientation, or as he put it, an ego-consciousness, that involve just these two differentiated functions.

On the other hand, the tertiary function is less differentiated, that is, less within our conscious grasp, and the inferior function is totally immersed in the unconscious, and thus a source of errors and complexes, but it also provides the bridge to the Self (the total personality) that the other differentiated functions cannot. The inferior function is carried by the anima or animus, contrasexual archetypes of the soul that can serve as tutelary figures, representing the “otherness” of the unconscious. They allow a relationship to develop between conscious and unconscious contents, with the potential to replace this tension of opposites with the harmony of wholeness.

The tertiary and inferior function would, in most people, remain potentials only, and are represented in dreams in archaic ways. In the second half of life, however, they press for integration into consciousness, to balance our one-sidedness and allow for wholeness, that is the lifelong task of individuation.

If you are unfamiliar with these concepts or need a refresher, it is recommended that you read the previous post, The Psychology of Personality Types.

Introduction

Jung’s functions follow a fourfold structure, which is typical of the archetype of the Self. These functions follow the archetypal patterns of the four classical elements: air (thinking), water (feeling), earth (sensation), and fire (intuition). The Self is the quintessence (the fifth element) which unites all of the elements, or all of the forms of consciousness. We are dealing with the archetype of the differentiation of consciousness, which helps you to become who you are meant to be. But, for that we must go beyond simple identification, and few of us really do. Most of us live as if we were simply our parent’s son or daughter, husband or wife, disciple, and so on. In other words, people live their complexes as if they were reality.

If we are to embark on the journey towards consciousness, we must break free from these identifications. For many, the psychological nature is as yet unborn. Each of us is born into a particular family and culture, shaped by a typological bias, and we quickly learn that failing to meet the expectations and demands of others can lead to serious consequences. In a way, unless we are fortunate enough to be born into a family that aligns well with our natural type, we all make a Faustian bargain in childhood—trading our true, innate nature for power, knowledge and material gain, and we pay an enormous price for that later on in life.

Psychological types have to do with discovering one’s own unique orientation—something that can only emerge after sufficient disorientation. It is not merely a framework for casually labelling others from the outside; to do so would entirely miss its true purpose.

Psychological types make sense of the way one follows one’s individuation process, but it does not account for the many distortions of type that arise from substituting other functions to satisfy or defend against the type demand of an environment that hinders individuation. One may appear to be very successful on the outside, but in reality, suffer from inner fragmentation. The persona or social mask, a collective way of playing a role in the world, may have nothing to do with one’s true nature.

It is also best not to make a type diagnosis to someone who has not yet made a connection to the self that would be natural to him or her, because all you may be doing is noticing the “negative personality” that has swallowed up the patient’s true self. When neurotic traits are easily diagnosed in a patient, it suggests that what is being observed is not the person’s natural personality, but rather “a falsification of the original personality.”

Consciousness is the Human Being’s Flower

What does consciousness mean? It isn’t simply non-comatose, although that does help. In a seminar, Jung was asked, “Is not individuation, in our sense of the word here, rather living life consciously? A plant individuates but it lives unconsciously.” Jung’s answer was:

“That is our form of individuation. A plant that is meant to produce a flower is not individuated if it does not produce a flower, it must fulfil the cycle, and the man who does not develop consciousness is not individuated, because consciousness is his flower; it is his life, it belongs to our process of individuation that we shall become conscious.”

Carl Jung, The Visions Seminars (22 June 1932)

In allowing the subtitle of Psychological Types to be “The Psychology of Individuation”, Jung implied that the flowering of consciousness has something to do with the progressive emergence of the psychological types. Just as a flower represents the individuation of a plant, consciousness represents the individuation of a human being. If a person individuates—fully blossoms—the various functions of consciousness become the petals of that flower. In this sense, consciousness is the human being’s flower.

The Eight Function-Attitudes

Towards the end of his book on psychological types, Jung combined function types and attitude types to describe, in turn, eight function-attitudes. These were the psychological types in Jung’s original description. However, very few of us, even among psychologists, can recognise the eight function-attitudes described by Jung.

For Jung, the attitude type is the primary thing, and the function type serves as a secondary aspect that expresses the attitude in a specific way. Accordingly, he organised his general description of the types in terms of the attitudes, describing first “the peculiarities of the basic psychological functions in the extraverted attitude”, and then going on to “the peculiarities of the basic psychological functions in the introverted attitude.”

Let us then briefly describe them.

Extraverted Thinking

The extraverted thinking type bases all actions on intellectual conclusions guided by objective data, whether external facts or accepted ideas. He elevates objective reality to a universal law, applying it to both personal and collective life. This embodies the entire meaning of his life. Just as this person subordinates himself to his formula, so too does he expect others to obey it too, for whoever refuses to obey it is wrong—he is resisting the universal law, and is therefore unreasonable, immoral, and without a conscience.

Extraverted thinking is interested in definitions that would hold true for everyone, according to ideas everyone might agree with. At their best, extraverted thinkers are statesmen, lawyers, practical scientists, respected academics, successful entrepreneurs. They are excellent at establishing order. However, the more rigid the formula, the more such a type develops into a tyrant who would like to force himself and others into one mould.

Activities reliant on feeling, like friendships, family time, and artistic pursuits, often suffer. Repressed potentialities eventually disturb conscious life, leading to doubt, which, when suppressed, breeds fanaticism—an overcompensation for uncertainty. No function can be fully eliminated, only distorted.

The more extreme a type is, the more active becomes the unconscious in terms of compensation. In such cases, an extravert thinking type’s personal concerns, health, social standing, and family interests are sacrificed for the ideal. Sympathy fades unless others share the same ideals, with close family often seeing only tyranny, while the outside world resounds with the fame of his humanity.

Extraverted Feeling

Extraverted feeling is likewise oriented by objective values. This type detaches from the subjective and adjusts entirely to external influences. Something is deemed “beautiful” or “good” not out of personal conviction but to maintain harmony, avoid discomfort, or create a pleasant atmosphere. For example, a painting might be praised for its famous signature or to avoid upsetting its owner, reflecting an adjustment rather than insincerity.

The valuations resulting from the act of feeling either correspond directly with objective values or accord with traditional and generally accepted standards. As such they are genuine, and represent the feeling function as a whole. The extravert feeling type seeks to connect with the feelings of others, to create a shared experience, by reaching out to ‘merge’ in some way with the other person. This kind of feeling is very largely responsible for the fact that so many people flock to the theatre or to concerts, or go to church. Fashions, too, owe their whole existence to it, and, what is far more valuable, the positive support of social, philanthropic, and other such cultural institutions. In fact, without it, a harmonious social life would be impossible.

The extraverted feeling type suppresses thinking most of all because this is the function most liable to disturb feeling. Consequently, the unconscious of this type contains a thinking that is infantile, archaic, and negative.

Extraverted Sensation

Extraverted sensation types have an exceptional grasp of reality, grounded in concrete experiences and objective facts. Their ideal is to be well adjusted to reality, and often have compelling experiences of the textures, smells, sights, sounds, and tastes of the world. They live fully in the present, valuing tangible reality and have little patience over abstraction or reflection. They are the masters at the details of life. They can read maps, find their way around a strange city; their rooms are neat and tidy, they are punctual and do not easily lose things, etc. Such types excel at being engineers, editors, athletes and people in business. They make great company because they pay attention to the external details, dressing well, keeping a good table with plenty of drinks for their friends, and so on.

Anything that comes from inside seems morbid. Only in the realm of tangible reality can they breathe freely. Their thoughts and feelings will be explained by objective causes or the influence of others. A change in mood is unhesitatingly blamed on the weather. Psychic conflicts are unreal—
“nothing but” imagination—an unhealthy state of affairs that will soon clear up when surrounded by friends.

In extreme cases the pursuit of sensation becomes all-consuming, and the individual develops into a crude pleasure-seeker, plagued by jealous fantasies, anxiety, and every sort of phobia.

Extraverted Intuition

Extraverted intuitive types tend to easily pick up on what is going on in the environment or in other people’s minds. They also have an extraordinary ability to seek out new possibilities, new fields to conquer, and their capacity to kindle enthusiasm for anything new is unrivalled. When entering, for instance, an empty house, they see what can be done with the space—the walls painted in particular colours, pictures in place, and even where the furniture will go. Sensation types see only what is in front of them. Intuitives see the same scene transformed. They have absolute loyalty to their vision and submit to its authority. Such types are common among entrepreneurs, investors, bankers, gamblers, hunters, etc.

The great danger for extraverted intuitives is that they will spend their time and energy on possibilities, particularly those of others, and never realise anything themselves. The very situations that seem to promise freedom or excitement quickly lead, once their possibilities have been exhausted, to the feeling of being imprisoned.  Thus, they will leave and seek something new. Moreover, such individuals tend to pay little attention to their physical needs. They simply do not notice, for instance, when they are tired or hungry. Over time, this self-neglect can manifest in various physical illnesses.

Introverted Thinking

The introverted thinking type is strongly influenced by ideas, though they have their origin not in objective data, but in his subjective foundation. He will follow his ideas like the extravert, but in the reverse direction: inwards and not outwards.

The introverted functions seek to match their experience of an object with the rich inner world of archetypal experience that is already present in the unconscious. Thus, one reflects on whether a particular idea really accords with one’s inner truth, regardless of what others might think of it. An intense relation to objects, which includes people and things, is secondary or almost completely lacking in every introverted type. Simply not pathologising introversion—seeing it not as an unhealthy and dysfunctional way to adapt to the world—may be one of the most healing things a psychologist can do.

An introverted thinker often struggles to know when to stop and feels the need to redefine everything from scratch, to the point that it becomes exhausting and hard to follow. Such people are typically oblivious to the objective requirements of, say, a relationship. It isn’t that they don’t love, but they are simply at a loss to know how to express it.  Although they never shrink from thinking a thought because it might prove to be dangerous or wound other people’s feelings, they are nonetheless beset by the greatest anxiety if ever they have to make it an objective reality.

In the pursuit of his ideas, the introverted thinker is generally stubborn. He lets himself be exploited if only he can be left in peace to pursue his ideas.  However, he will burst out with vicious, personal retorts against every criticism, however just. Casual acquaintances think him inconsiderate and domineering. To outsiders he seems prickly, unapproachable, and arrogant. But the better one knows him, the more favourable one’s judgment becomes, and his closest friends value his intimacy very highly.

The introverted thinking type is the proverbial “absent-minded professor”. This can be quite charming, but less so the more he becomes single-mindedly attached to his own ideas or inner images. Then his convictions become rigid and unbending, his judgment cold, inflexible, arbitrary. In the extreme case, he may lose all connection with objective reality and so become isolated from friends, family and colleagues.

Introverted Feeling

Introverted feeling types tend to have a calm appearance behind which there may be considerable inner emotion, character, or intellect. “Still waters run deep” is very true of such people. They are mostly silent, inaccessible, hard to understand; often they hide behind a childish mask, and their temperament is inclined to melancholy. As they are mainly guided by their subjective feelings, they are concerned with values that matter most to themselves, and their true motives generally remain hidden. People of this type neither shine nor reveal themselves. Their lack of desire to impress or influence others sometimes arouses a suspicion of indifference and coldness on the one hand, and stupidity on the other.

Wordless expression is a common feature of such people. They are more interested in solving an underlying feeling problem than in making communications to address people’s expressions of discomfort triggered by the problem. Extraverted feeling, by contrast, tends to be more communicative, using a stream of reassuring words to put people at ease.

Since introverted feeling types appear reserved, it might seem on a superficial view that such people, paradoxically, have no feelings at all. The feeling of such a person may express itself in a secret religiosity anxiously guarded from others, or in intimate poetic forms that are kept equally well hidden, not without the secret ambition of displaying some kind of superiority over the other person by this means.

The secret feelings are sensed as a sort of stifling presence that holds everyone nearby under a spell. This presence carries a mysterious power that can prove terribly fascinating to an extraverted individual, especially a thinking type, as it resonates deeply with the unconscious.

This type has a primitive and inferior thinking which tends to be reductive and concrete. Introverted feeling types often have a heightened sensitivity to “what other people think,” frequently perceiving others as harbouring negative thoughts, scheming, or plotting against them. This leads to fatigue, stress, restlessness, and irritability. Over time, their deep emotional intensity can deteriorate into a superficial and excessive need for control, expressed through vanity and authoritarian dominance.

Introverted Sensation

The introverted sensation type is guided by the intensity of the subjective sensation excited by the objective stimulus. For instance, when somebody comes into the room, he notices the way the person comes in, the expression in the face, the clothes, etc., every detail is absorbed. Outwardly, the introverted sensation type looks like a piece of wood with no reaction at all, and you do not know what is going on within him, but inwardly the impression is being absorbed. The quicker inner reactions go on underneath, and the outer reaction comes in a delayed way. These are the people who, if told a joke, are likely the last to laugh. Introverted sensation concerns itself primarily with finding order, organising experience, and monitoring the comfort of the body on the inside, seeking to avoid it from getting overstimulated, overheated, too tired, too hungry, or too filled with the wrong foods.

Such a type may appear as calm and passive or capable of rational self-control. However, this is really due to his unrelatedness to objects. Normally the object is not consciously devalued in the least, but its stimulus is removed from it and immediately replaced by a subjective reaction no longer related to the reality of the object. Such a person can easily make one question why one should exist at all, or why objects in general should have any justification for their existence since everything essential still goes on happening without them.

Seen from the outside, it looks as though the effect of the object does not penetrate into the subject at all. In extreme cases, the subject has an illusory conception of reality which goes so far that he is no longer able to distinguish between the real object and the subjective perception. Since his unconscious is distinguished chiefly by the repression of intuition, this type lives in a mythological world, where people, houses, mountains, rivers, and things, appear either as benevolent deities or as malevolent demons.

Introverted Intuition

The introverted intuitive type, like the extraverted intuitive, senses future possibilities and potential outcomes, but focuses inward. These individuals look at the big picture in the unconscious—the collective unconscious—where the archetypal patterns that that move nations, religions, and epochs lay, even in the midst of apparently “individual experiences.” They often appear as seers, prophets, poets, artists, or shamans. As an artist, the individual reveals strange, beautiful, and whimsical things in his work. If not an artist, he is often a misunderstood genius.

On a more mundane level, such people are mystical daydreamers who struggle to communicate and are often misunderstood, lack self-awareness, and accomplish little. They move between images and possibilities, lost in the unconscious without forming personal connections. They are especially liable to neglect ordinary physical needs, and often have little awareness of their own bodily existence or its effect on others. To extraverts, they may seem detached from reality, lost in fruitless fantasies. Introverted intuitives are vague about real-world details, prone to getting lost, missing appointments, and being late. Their lack of bodily awareness also makes them inattentive lovers.

What the introverted intuitive represses most of all is the sensation of the object, and this colours his whole unconscious. It gives rise to a compensatory extraverted sensation of an archaic character, manifesting as compulsive neurosis with hypochondriacal symptoms, hypersensitivity of the sense organs, and obsessive attachments to certain people or objects.

The Most Difficult Types

Jung acknowledges that although both the introverted intuitive and the introverted sensation type are, from an extraverted and rationalistic standpoint, “indeed the most useless of men”, the way they function is nevertheless instructive. They are living evidence that this rich and varied world with its overflowing and intoxicating life is not purely external, but also exists within. In their own way, these people are the educators and promoters of culture. Their life teaches more than their words.

For Jung, the introvert intuitive is the most difficult type because he sees such uncommon things that he does not like to talk about them, and if he does, he is bound to be misunderstood. The introvert intuitive has one of the most difficult lives, but also one of the most interesting ones.

A Dinner Party with the Types

In Daryl Sharp’s book, Personality Types: Jung’s Model of Typology, he describes the eight different types of consciousness personified as guests at a dinner party. The hostess, appropriate to her role, embodies extraverted feeling, ensuring the gathering runs smoothly. Her husband, a quiet, slender professor of art history, excels at distinguishing subtle details in artwork. He represents introverted sensation.

An extraverted thinking lawyer is the first guest to arrive. An industrialist, well dressed but loud, and a greedy though appreciate eater, comes later. He stands for extraverted sensation. His wife, a quiet and reserved woman with mysterious eyes, exerts a strangely magnetic effect on the other guests with her introverted feeling.

An introverted thinking professor of medicine arrives next, absorbed in thoughts of his latest research, seemingly detached from the social atmosphere. He is followed by an extraverted intuitive engineer, who enthusiastically discusses his ambitious plans, which one suspects will come to fruition only if someone else carries them out. While speaking, he gobbles down his food without noticing what he is eating.

The final intended guest, a young and poor poet, forgets to attend entirely. Upon realising his mistake, he plans by way of apology to send the hostess a poem he was working on while the party was taking place, embodying the dreamy nature of the introverted intuitive.

Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type

In his book, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type, American psychiatrist and Jungian psychologist John Beebe expands on Jung’s work on types. If the dominant function is extraverted, for instance, the traditional Jungian model would consider the auxiliary and tertiary functions extraverted too, and therefore the only one to carry one’s introverted side would be the inferior function. In Beebe’s model, however, he considers all eight forms of consciousness as part of our single, individual psyche. It is the effects of consciousness on personality, not types of personality. If the primary function is introverted, then the auxiliary will be extraverted, and vice versa. This natural alternation in our functions of consciousness is very adaptive: it keeps us from being too one-sided.

The eight-function model is not purely theoretical; it emerged from Beebe’s extensive study of his own dreams, fantasies, and behaviours, as well as those of his patients, drawing on over 50 years of experience in psychotherapy. Beebe came upon a fourfold shadow structure that complements the conscious counterparts, but are generally more negative and destructive in nature.

Only through direct experience of the types as one’s own, can one benefit from type theory. Otherwise, it merely becomes another way to learn from others about one’s identity. While there can still be value in discovering new energy for adaptation, it is not the same as individuation.

Jung had emphasised that the theory of psychological types should be used not as a way of classifying people but for “sorting out the empirical material” in therapy. This approach helps a patient identify where a particular complex lives in the psyche. When analysing a dream figure, it is useful to consider its type. In psychotherapy, a patient’s issue may be described as a thinking, feeling, intuitive, or sensation problem.  

The goal is to match the appropriate function of consciousness to the situation. From this perspective, the development of consciousness involves the ability to summon the different functions at the right moments and in the right ways.

The Eight-Function, Eight-Archetype Model

Beebe’s innovation was not only to extend the fourfold model to an eightfold model of personality, but also associating an archetype with each type. Jung had compared the inferior function with the anima or animus. Beebe gave an adequate name to the rest. To give an example of the eightfold model, let us consider Jung’s own type: introverted thinking intuitive.

Introverted thinking, the primary function, is represented by the hero or heroine, while the secondary function is extraverted intuitive, symbolised by the father or mother. The tertiary function is introverted sensation, represented by the puer aeternus or puella aeterna (the eternal child), and the inferior function is extraverted feeling, associated with the anima or animus.

These four archetypes belong to the ego-syntonic aspect of consciousness, that is, to the personality which aligns harmoniously with the needs and goals of the ego. Behind each typological position in the unfolding of consciousness, an archetype plays a role, guiding us to be heroic, parental, and even puerile and contrasexual, as part of what makes us capable of becoming aware of ourselves and the world around us.

These four archetypes belong to one’s mostly conscious orientation, which Beebe calls the ‘little-s’ self. This is the typology of one’s everyday self-experience, the basis of one’s ongoing consciousness as a person having one’s own standpoint with its inevitable strengths and weaknesses.

As for the other four function-attitudes, we enter the realm of the shadow, or what Beebe refers to as the ego-dystonic (or ego-alien) personality. This aspect develops in opposition to the ego and often appears disruptive or destructive to the ego’s goals.

The shadow is repressed because it is felt to be incompatible with a person’s moral values, holding onto feelings, motives, and desires deemed unworthy. Since it’s not accepted as part of oneself, the shadow can act autonomously, sometimes breaking free from repression to express the very impulses the ego has rejected. Watch what you hate—it’s pure gold!

Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz writes:

“Jung had said that the hardest thing to understand is not your opposite type—if you have introverted feeling it is very difficult to understand an extraverted type—but the same functional type with the other attitude! It would be most difficult for an introverted feeling type to understand an extraverted feeling type… Such people remain to a great extent a puzzle and are very difficult to understand spontaneously. Here the theory of types is tremendously important practically, for it is the only thing which can prevent one from completely misunderstanding certain people.”

Marie-Louise von Franz and James Hillman, Lectures on Jung’s Typology

Beebe applied this idea to the situation within a single psyche, in which the antagonism is not between two people, but between two functions with opposite attitudes, seeking to express themselves within the same person. In this context, the shadow refers to having the same function but opposite attitude.

Continuing with Jung’s own type as an example, extraverted thinking, the opposing personality, challenges the hero; introverted intuition, the senex (Latin for old man) or witch, counteracts the good parent; extraverted sensation, the trickster, challenges the puer; and introverted feeling, the demonic personality, competes with the anima.

The superior hero and inferior anima or animus functions form a vertical axis, which Beebe calls the spine of personality. This is the axis of our relation to self, which forms the core of our personality, and allows us to know who we truly are. It establishes both our greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses. Integrity comes not only from having appropriate pride in your strengths, but also in accepting your weaknesses, and holding that tension of opposites. This awareness is vital—it allows us to embrace the reality that we are both strong and weak, opening us to the paradox of living with both.

The auxiliary and tertiary functions have a horizontal axis, called the arms of personality. This is the axis of our relation to others, which is focused on how we care for others and are cared for by them. Some people define their whole lives according to the arms of personality, and have little curiosity as to who they are, but they are greatly concerned about how they treat others and are treated by them.

Let us now briefly look into each archetype.

Hero/Heroine

The hero or heroine archetype represents the superior function of consciousness, and the archetypal image for the development of the ego or self-identity which begins in early childhood. It is the area of strength and pride, because it is associated with a sense of competence and potential mastery. As such, it initiates individuation. The hero is the symbol of the greatest value recognised by us. He is the one who not only welcomes life’s challenges, but also takes responsibility to confront them. This requires autonomy and a need to separate oneself from the excessive superego expectations of others, whether it be from parents, colleagues or social institutions.

However, it is also possible to develop a superiority complex when one is too identified with one’s superior function. Identification with an archetype leads to ego inflation, and the goal of the psychologist is to loosen one’s excessive identification with the godlike archetypes, in order for one’s humanity to reveal itself, stripping off all false pretensions, and allowing one’s true personality to emerge.

Father/Mother

The father or mother belongs to the auxiliary function, it behaves like a parent, and is concerned with nurturing, fostering and protecting. Beebe primarily addresses male psychology, noting that the lack of fatherly energy transmission creates a hunger in young men to seek out older male figures who have something to transmit. This often leads to the conflation of the father figure with the archetype of the Wise Old Man in the minds of young people.

The archetype of the father goes beyond just the physical presence of the father; it includes the body of knowledge about fatherhood that he passes down, allowing his children to undergo an initiation process towards maturity and selfhood. A crucial aspect of a man’s masculinity is tied to how potent or impotent he feels in having something valuable to impart. This may represent the archetypal essence of fatherhood. It is important to recognise a man’s need to engage with what might be symbolised by the totem pole, representing a vertical succession of ancestors. Each man must receive love and guidance from his father, and, in turn, be able to pass this on to his own children.

The nurturing father archetype is associated with the auxiliary function, not the dominant function, so that, as the father archetype comes into play and becomes important to the man, he must loosen his identification with the archetype of the hero. The hero is forever proving his own mastery. The father, by contrast, seeks to help the people he mentors to feel and be more competent. He cannot fulfil this role if he remains in competition with them.

The confusion of the two leading functions into one is a very easy mistake to make in attempting type diagnosis.

Puer Aeternus/Puella Aeterna

The puer aeternus (or puella aeterna) represents the tertiary function and is characterised by immaturity and play.  The tertiary function is like the left hand of a right-handed person, sometimes original and creative, but always a bit unstable and at times weaker in its reliability than the inferior function. Even when the tertiary function shows talent, it tends to be acutely aware of its need for support or guidance from someone else, and is thus more associated with vulnerability than with competence.

The eternal child is someone who exhibits a kind of false individualism. Since he is special, he sees no need to adapt. This leads to an arrogant attitude towards others, fuelled by both an inferiority complex and false feelings of superiority. Such individuals often struggle to find the right job, as nothing ever seems quite right or what they truly wanted. The same applies to relationships. There is always a “but” that prevents the puer from making any real commitment. Their ideals are so far removed from reality that everything feels like it is not the real thing, leading to a form of neurosis, the “provisional life”, the strange attitude and feeling that one is not yet in real life.

Of course, the eternal child is not only negative, he can also bring the energy, beauty and creativity of childhood into adult life. It is, as Nietzsche puts it, the archetype that utters a sacred “yes” to life, the pinnacle of life-affirmation.

Anima/Animus

The anima (or animus) is tied to the inferior function, and for most people, it is a source of shame and embarrassment. Acknowledging and accepting this shame with a measure of humility is a crucial first step towards knowing oneself, finding integrity, and beginning to make a meaningful connection to the unconscious. If this doesn’t happen, the anima will be like a flower that hasn’t bloomed. Jung calls the anima “the archetype of life” because she gives a man the feeling that he is alive.

The anima is also a place of great idealism in the psyche. Thus, a person whose superior function is introverted thinking will often put a very high value on the goal of everyone in a group getting along together, although this person may lack any of the feeling skills to facilitate such an outcome. Conversely, an introverted feeling type may be drawn to champion the most abstruse strains of philosophy, even as he or she has to struggle to follow the more intricate twists of thinking.

The anima is a gateway to the unconscious—acting as the mediatrix to the Self. Jung recommends getting to know one’s anima as well as possible, especially during the second half of life. That is his therapy for the numerous anima problems: bad moods, resentments, obsessive longings for attachment, uncontrolled emotional outbursts. All of these, Jung says, are symptoms of “faulty adaptation to the inner world.”

Since the anima is concerned with how the man is relating to his deeper psyche, she will call attention to problems by sending symptoms from dread and depression to obsession and depersonalisation. Through these manifestations, the anima moves the ego to acknowledge the reality of the psyche. These symptoms tend to moderate when the anima is recognised as the bridge to the unknowable self, which the man must learn to respect.

When Beebe struggled with depression, migraines, and exhaustion, he dreamt of a glum Chinese woman sitting alone in an empty room. Her husband squandered their money on gambling and drugs, leaving her with nothing. The woman, his real-life laundress, was practical and efficient, embodying an introverted sensation type—focused on tangible, sensory matters. Beebe saw the husband in the dream as a less flattering side of his superior function, extraverted intuition, chasing possibilities and taking his energy into the world. The dream was saying, very specifically, that his introverted sensation was not getting anything from him. Beebe writes:

“I looked at what was happening with my patients in my developing psychotherapy practice. I was very excited to hear everything they were telling me, so much so that I was listening with bated breath, neglecting even to breathe properly. No wonder I came home to migraine headaches: I was retaining carbon dioxide. I made up my mind that I would have to attend to my breathing while listening to patients. This opened a series of spaces that allowed me to be aware of my body as I practiced therapy. I then noticed that in my body, as I attended to it, were clues to what was going on in my patient beyond anything dream interpretation could have revealed.”

John Beebe, Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type

Beebe noticed that if his stomach or chest felt tense, that was a signal that his patient was feeling “uptight”. By paying attention to these bodily sensations and discussing the feelings with the patient he was experiencing inwardly, relevant material would surface, helping to move the therapy forward. When Beebe helped the patient express the feelings his body had picked up, he would finish the session without a headache and feel energised, rather than depleted. This approach seemed to serve as a tonic for his inner life.

Later, a dream about the Chinese laundress showed her happier, as her husband had been taking her out for ice cream.

Opposing Personality

The opposing personality is the shadow of the hero, an area of frustration and challenge that fuels defensive character traits such as paranoia, avoidance, passive-aggressiveness and inappropriate seduction. This archetype is constellated when we feel our heroic superior function and its most cherished values are under attack, or when we are called upon to use the function-attitude it carries.

The opposing personality can be viewed as a tendency to become detached in relation to certain kinds of situations one doesn’t immediately know how to handle, or to ‘tune out’ in the face of affects one doesn’t know how to deal with. This consciousness can end up opposing one’s own best interests in perverse ways.

Until we look into the shadow of our superior function, we will tend to project the difficulty within us onto other people who might have certain “hooks” to catch the projection. Projection is always easier than assimilation. According to Beebe, the opposing personality is one of two places in a man’s psyche where his inner femininity, is likely to show up strongly. In the grip of this archetype, a man may make spiteful or hateful remarks or unleash a seductive charm whose purpose is to exercise control over others.

While the anima holds the potential for leading a man toward wholeness, the same cannot be usually said of the opposing personality. When the anima is projected onto a woman, a man may idealise her or want to marry her. Projecting the opposing personality, by contrast, will cause a man to see the woman in a negative or troublesome light as she seems to embody the man’s own antagonistic traits. Thus, the relationship that ensues is usually characterised by arguments and confrontations.

Senex/Witch

The senex is an archetype that shadows the good father that one consciously aspires to be when one tries to help people, while the witch is the shadow of the good mother. These are characterised by limit-setting and control, defending themselves by shaming and blaming and being overly sceptical or cynical. The senex is particularly paralysing to a woman’s animus, while the witch has a similar effect on a man’s anima. These archetypes discourage and disable others; they freeze others in their tracks and make them doubt that what they are doing has any value.

The child who experiences the disapproving or abusive parent can remain a part of us even as we grow into adulthood, causing a traumatic neurosis which is carried by the tertiary function as the wounded boy or girl.

The senex and the witch appear inwardly as the withering self-critic that seems to drain all the vitality out of the individual. Captured by this archetype, the remaining persona seems old, dry and absent of animation; all that remains is cynicism, a tendency towards depreciation, and despair. To hear this archetype’s repeated insistence on life’s lack of meaning, value, and future makes one realise how much this is the voice of major depression. In extreme cases, there can be the psychotic delusion that one has actually died and is rotting.

The special domain of knowledge or authority of the senex archetype is the old man who, metaphorically speaking, paces up and down inside each of us, waiting for his chance to put troublesome people in their place. The mythological image is the Roman god Saturn, with his sickle, who has become less an archetypal image of the harvest and taken on a more deadly aspect as the archenemy of the processes of youth, growth, and development.

Men identified with the senex are often harsh toward those identified with the puer aeternus, but their more typical interactions are with the trickster. The senex takes a grim pleasure in catching the trickster in deceit, reinforcing the senex worldview that people cannot be trusted. While the senex can be dogmatic and harsh, there is also wisdom in the way this archetype sets limits, despite its initially intimidating appearance.

People possessed by the senex archetype can often be hard to empathise with. It may help to realise that it is an archetype that emerges when a person feels their self-identity is in decline, and they are beginning to lose control of their life. As such times, the senex resorts to strategies that simulate heroism, often living in a fantastical world akin to Don Quixote, these fictions become the sole purpose and meaning of their lives.

The self-critical patient may relentlessly punish himself, but the therapist is usually not allowed to breathe a word that might expose the fictions by which the patient is living. However, one must challenge these fictions.

Trickster

The trickster is the shadow of the puer or puella and represents manipulation, mischief, and paradox. This archetype poses a challenge for psychologists, as psychotherapy requires sincerity and vulnerability—traits the trickster lacks. The trickster resists having to do things the way others think is right, defying rules that attempt to uphold standards of behaviour and questioning the values of those who defend the standards.

Beebe observed that the trickster is often projected onto difficult male or female patients whose intense subjectivity seems to constantly undercut his efforts to help them with psychological understanding. When the trickster appears out of the psyche of a patient, it often reveals itself through its ability to create a double bind—a psychological trap in which the person receives conflicting messages, making it impossible to respond correctly. It is a situation where you cannot win, no matter what you do.

Another characteristic of the trickster is duplicity—the state of being double and deliberately deceptive in behaviour or speech. Patients who have aligned their survival strategies with this archetype can be quite duplicitous, urging their therapists to support personal choices that are actually harmful. The therapist must have integrated enough trickster of his or her own to be able to turn the double bind around and reverse the terms of the hard bargain that the trickster in the patient is seeking to impose.

Demonic/Daimonic Personality

The demonic personality is the shadow of the anima or animus, and consists of undermining oneself and others.These actions or judgments often seem surprising and mysterious, even to ourselves. When we act in a primal or destructive way, it is often through this archetype. The inferior function, if not addressed during the development of consciousness, is vulnerable to the demonic aspect of the unconscious.

Beebe gives an example of a man in his early fifties going to therapy because his whole psyche would be set vibrating simply by his father’s phone calls. At first, however, the patient did not know that his psyche was vibrating: his wife had to tell him, when she picked up the ‘vibes’, which she felt as painful and intolerable force fields.

The man eventually realised his father’s abusive behaviour triggered fear and rage, causing physical agitation. Setting boundaries with his father eased these symptoms, and he left therapy, but soon new difficulties arose. He began hearing an inner voice saying, “You’re nothing,” revealing his demonic personality.

He had to acknowledge his deep vulnerability when the inner voice spoke, recognising the same agitated, painful vibrations his wife had felt. This led him to connect with his anima for the first time. Until then, he believed in enduring unpleasant states of mind by distracting himself with work, focusing on tasks to feel a sense of accomplishment, even if it meant living in misery most of the time.

As an introverted sensation type, he realised that dissociating from his feelings and pushing through was no longer helpful. He returned to therapy, where he learned to confront and engage in dialogue with his inner voice. For the first time in years, he took a look at the big picture of his career, and saw that it no longer had the meaning for him that it once had. He made a career change to work that better aligned with his values and allowed him to contribute more meaningfully. In this way, the introverted intuitive demon that had plagued him became a daimon, guiding him to a higher level of integration within his own ethical perspective. The daimonic personality is the area of redemption that creates opportunities to develop integrity.

Conclusion

We may see these eight archetypes as different personalities within the vast theatre of the unconscious. They too have a role to play in our lives, seeking to express themselves outwardly. It is by integrating these archetypes of the collective unconscious that we truly become an individual. This process is at the heart of individuation. It is the journey of discovering your essence—who you were meant to be. While these archetypes have typical characteristics, they do not manifest identically in every individual but adapt uniquely to each person’s life.

By making use of all the eight forms of consciousness in the course of our lives, we move towards wholeness. When it comes to knowing ourselves, we must integrate the hero and the anima or animus, while acknowledging the limitations of the opposing and demonic personalities. In our relationships with others, we need to be in touch with the parent and child within us, while being mindful of the senex (or witch) and the trickster, whose influences can be both guiding and disruptive.

When we are able to translate emotions into images—that is to say, to find the images which are concealed in the emotions—we are inwardly calmed and reassured. However, if we leave those images hidden in the emotions, we might be torn to pieces by them. When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. If we do not gain control over the images within us, we run the risk of them gaining control over us.

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The Psychology of Knowing Yourself

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