On Sigmund Freud's Psychological Type
by Marie-Louise von Franz
The introverted feeling type also has the characteristic that he adapts to life mainly be feeling, but in an introverted way. This type is very difficult to understand. Jung says in Psychological Types that the saying “still waters run deep” applies to this type. They have a highly differentiated scale of values, but they do not express them outwardly; they are affected by them within. One often finds the introverted feeling type in the background where important and valuable events are taking place, as if their introverted feeling had told them “that is the real thing.” With a kind of silent loyalty, and without any explanation, they turn up in places where important and valuable inner facts, archetypal constellations, are to be found. They are also generally exert a positive secret influence on their surroundings by setting standards. The others observe them, and though they say nothing, for they are too introverted to express themselves much, they set certain standards. Introverted feeling types, for instance, very often form the ethical backbone of a group: without irritating the others by preaching moral or ethical precepts, they themselves have such correct standards of ethical values that they secretly emanate a positive influence on those around them. One has to behave correctly because they have the right kind of value standard, which always suggestively forces one to be decent if they are present. Their differentiated introverted feeling sees which is inwardly the really important factor.
The thinking of this type is extraverted. In striking contrast to their silent and inconspicuous outer appearance, persons of the introverted feeling type are generally interested in an immense number of outer facts. In their conscious personality they do not move about much; they tend to sit in their badger’s hole. But their extraverted thinking roams about in an extraordinary range of outer facts. If they want to use their extraverted thinking in a creative way, they have the usual extravert’s difficulty in being overwhelmed by too much material, too many references and too many facts, so their inferior extraverted thinking sometimes just gets lost in a morass of details through which they can no longer find their way. The inferiority of their extraverted thinking very often expresses itself in a certain monomania: they have actually only one or two thoughts with which they race through tremendous amount of material. Jung always characterized the Freudian system as a typical example of extraverted thinking.
Jung never said anything about Freud’s type as a human being; he only pointed out in his books that Freud’s system represents extraverted thinking. What I add now is my own personal conviction, namely, that Freud himself was an introverted feeling type, and therefore his writings bear the characteristics of his inferior extraverted thinking. In all his works the basic ideas are few. With them he has raced through an enormous amount of material, and the whole system is completely oriented toward the outer object. If one reads biographical notes about Freud, one sees that as a person he had a most differentiated way of treating other people. He was an excellent analyst. He had also a kind of hidden “gentlemanliness” which had a positive influence upon his patients and upon his surroundings. One must really in his case make a distinction between this theory and his personality as a human being. I think, from what one hears about him, that he belonged to the introverted feeling type.
The advantage of inferior extraverted thinking is what I just now characterized negatively as “racing with a few ideas through a tremendous amount of material.” (Freud himself complained that his dream interpretations felt awfully monotonous; the same interpretation of every dream was boring even to him.) if this tendency is not overdone, and if the introverted feeling type is aware of the danger of his inferior function and keeps a check on it, it has the great advantage of being simple, clear and intelligible. But this is not enough, and the introverted feel type is obliged to drill a bit deeper and try to specify and differentiate his extraverted thinking. Otherwise he will fall into the trap of intellectual monomania. Therefore, he has to specify his thinking; that is, he should make the hypothesis that each fact he quotes in proof of this ideas illustrates them in a slightly different way, and with this point in view, his ideas should be reformulated each time. In this way he maintains the living process of contact between thought and fact, instead of simply imposing his thought upon facts. Inferior extraverted thinking has just the same negative tendencies of being tyrannical, stiff and unyielding, and in that way not quite adapted to its object, that all other inferior functions have.
