The Question of Psychological Types: The Correspondence of C. G. Jung and Hans Schmid-Guisan, 1915-1916

[undated]¹⁰²

Dear Friend,

I would like to say in advance that in general I agree¹⁰³ with the views expressed in your letter. They are very clear and show the way that leads beyond the incongruity of the two types. Here too, as always, I have to admire the extravert’s capacity to move ahead of the difficulty, and beyond it, with his feeling. The extravert feels prospectively, the introvert retrospectively, so that the latter remains longer under the impression of the difficulty.¹⁰⁴

It seems to me that we are proceeding from different levels. I realized this when I read your interpretation of my example of the teacher. When I speak of the “ideally oriented” extravert, I speak of someone who is in greatest accordance with his type. This implies that such a person realizes his feeling¹⁰⁵ to the greatest extent, and his self- knowledge to the least extent. For this reason I would like to call precisely that teacher an ideally oriented type. She naturally makes the mistake, as can be expected, of not realizing her archaic motherly attitude because of her lack of self- knowledge. She could do this if she ever reached the subjective plane, and asked herself: “Why am I always fussing with my students? Couldn’t the mistake lie with me?” Naturally she is fully justified in fussing with the object, according to her type, but

¹⁰² The date of 7 August 1915 has been added in different handwriting within square brackets on the original.

¹⁰³ Corrected from: that I absolutely agree.

¹⁰⁴ Crossed out: So when I stay with the difficulty for the moment, this is not in order to diminish the value of your remarks, but to stay true to my type for another few moments.

¹⁰⁵ That is, his feeling for the other person (or outer “object”). At this stage of type theory, Jung had not yet formulated “introverted feeling,” in which he later saw a possible form of self- knowledge.

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