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

28. IX. 15

Dear Friend,

It is not in the character of the extravert to be distrustful. As long as he still considers his thinking infallible, he will be distrustful toward the thoughts of the other in his thinking. But in most cases the extravert has still to learn how to be distrustful in his feelings.

You read a mistrust into my last letter that wasn’t there, and you speak, therefore, of mutual mistrust. I did grant you the a priori trust you postulated in your letter, and thus my first reaction when reading it was being greatly astounded that you took a large part of my remarks personally, and adopt an attitude toward them like someone who defends himself against someone distrustful.

In the first part of my letter, in which I wrote only about the psychology of the extravert, I tried to set forth my views on the latter’s problems, and to stress particularly those points in which my views do not agree with yours. I was far from wanting to lecture you, let alone to reform you. I simply felt the need to explain what I see as my truth. I admit that there were times when I believed that the introvert would have to take the same way as the extravert to realize his feelings. I have long since reached the conclusion, however, that such processes—if he has to go through them at all—are of much less importance to the introvert for the realization of his feelings, much as the classical languages are less important to a doctor than to a philologist. For the extravert these processes are indispensable for the development of his personality; for the introvert they are indispensable only insofar as he also wants to develop his feeling side,¹⁸² and¹⁸³ I am far from claiming that

¹⁸² Here again, the feeling side of the introvert is assumed by Schmid (following Jung’s original equation of feeling and extraversion) to be extraverted— even if mostly undeveloped, because in the unconscious.

¹⁸³ Rest of sentence beginning with “and” inserted later.

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