4 Sept. 1915
Dear Friend,
When two opposed types discuss the type problem, the greatest part of the discussion is taken up by talking and understanding at cross- purposes. Language here reveals its incredible incapacity of reflecting the finer nuances that are indispensable for understanding. Thus, when it comes to matters of psychology, every linguistic sign can mean both one thing and its opposite. When you speak of the extravert and the feeling of an “identité mystique,”148 then naturally many things I said about the extravert do not apply. What I was actually talking about was the “ideally oriented” extravert, and by “ideal” I do not mean “ideal” in the sense it is used in expressions such as “ideal aspirations” and “ideal convictions,” but “ideal” in the sense of “corresponding to one’s principle.” Here the term “ideal” also implies that the ideal type is an imaginary or abstracted type that does not exist in reality, because a real person naturally also has the other mechanism within himself, with the help of which he can take the edge off what is all- too sharp in the “ideal.” The more “ideal” a case is the more pathological it is. You are perfectly right, therefore, in assuming that I am speaking mainly of “coarse” or “pathological” persons, among whom the “ideally oriented” can be found. The term “ideal” lays an unintentional mantrap. In contrast to these cases, you are speaking of the compensated ones, where the situation is of course different. But then again you are mainly speaking of how a case “should be,” and not how it “is,” whereas I proceeded from the assumption that we were talking about the “types” themselves, and not about “compensated”
148 Mystical identity, a term coined by Lévy- Bruehl; cf. “participation mystique.”
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