Remembering the Fundamentals of Type – Grounding Ourselves in the Basics

A while back I recall reading an article by a figure skater (I can’t recall the details of the story or the publication) who was constantly drilled by her coach to practice her basic jumps – over and over and over again.  At first, she felt as if she was being held back through this repetition as she was already advanced; why did she have to do the simple things repeatedly? The article ends with her epiphany that contant practice of the basics made her advanced routines that much better and propelled her forward.

I saw a similar theme while watching Grey’s Anatomy a couple of weeks ago; Christina Yang, a gifted 5th year sugical resident with unfaltering self-confidence was pressed by her mentor, Teddy Altman, to perform basic surgical procedures and  she was then questioned by Teddy her throughout the procedures;  “Why are you using that tool? Why did you select that size? Why are you making the cut there? Christina finally objects “Why you doing this to me? You are wasting my gift.”  Toward the end of the episode, she finally sees the light when in the the middle of one of these procedures, she forgets what comes next and is guided by the surgical nurse, much to her dismay. 

These stories remind me of what I learned in piano lessons as a kid; its all about “technique”; how you hold your hands, strike the keys, press the pedal.  In ballet it was posture, core strength, and length, pulling your abdomen in and tilting your pelvis forward, pulling your shoulders down, lengthening your arms, curving your fingers just so and “spotting” while you turn.  Each week in my Yoga practice, I am reminded and re-reminded that I need to re-learn, alter and improve upon my breathing and my form.  In Pilates, I need to learn and re-learn to pull in from the core, lengthen my spine and get the correct breathing sequence before I move on to advanced exercises.

I can’t help but think of how this relates to learning about and teaching psychological type.  As I see it, the fundamentals of psychological type are clearly stated by Daryl Sharp in one sentence from his book, Personality Types, Jung’s Model of Psychology. 

“Jung’s model is concerned with the movement of psychic energy and  the way in which one habitually or preferentially orients oneself to the world.”

Sharp indictes that fundamentally type is about the movement of our psychic energy – our life force, or  ’libido’ as Jung called it.  I have learned to talk about this energy force or process as one that alternates and flows rythmically between the cycle of contraction (introversion) and the cycle of expansion (extraversion) like a heartbeat (I know that Jung said this somewhere!).   As our energy moves outward, we focus on the objective world, or “objects” that are outside of us.  These objects can be verified by others, so the process is “objective”.  When our energy pulls us inward toward ourselves, our focus is on self as the “subject”.  Jung called the introverted attitude, “subjective”‘ because we are the only ones that can really know what is inside of ourselves.  When we are extraverting we are concerned with what is happening in the environment; when we are introverting, we are concerned with what is happening inside of ourselves.  We are either pulled more toward our extraverted or our introvered world; it is there that we will likely spend more time.  However, none of us can ignore the pull that we have for balance towards the other world.  Our habitual preference is indicated by Myers’ first dichotomy on the Indicator.

The second basic premise of psychological type in Sharp’s statement is that type provides our orientation to the world.  This is not to be confused with Myers’ J-P dichotomy, as she uses the same language for how we live our life in the outer world.  What I believe Sharp is speaking of here is Jung’s notion that our personality crystallizes around one of the functions (S, N, T or F) in either one or the other attitude (E or I).  These  are what have become known as the mental processes (or functions-in-attitude).  Even though we all engage in using all of the functions, Jung indicated that one function will guide our way.  He called it the “superior” function and Myers’ named it the “dominant” function.  I was at a workshop this weekend wherein renowned type expert Danielle Poirier( http://mbtitoday.org/applications-of-type/ - scroll down to the Magnificent 16) said that 80% of your conscious personality is your dominant function.  It determines how we adjust to, learn about and live our lives; and it is what accounts for the differences between people – we are oriented by different functions.   It is the foundation of  who and how we are in the world; in fact Jung said the 8 mental functions represented 8 different psychological types.  Jung thought of psychological type as his compass to guide him through life http://mbtitoday.org/carl-jung-psychological-type/. 

Quite often, I re-read portions of the MBTI Manual, Introduction to Type and books on Jungian psychology in general.  Each time I read and re-read these texts, I see the fundamentals of psychological type in a different and deeper way; I pick up new words to use in my introductory sessions, or think up new creative ways of explaining the theory.  Kind of like the stories I opened with – a slight adjustment through deeper understanding enables me to become just a little bit better at facilitating and teaching type.  It also becomes easier for me to clarify for my participants the dynamic nature of type – how the eight mental functions are active processes that we engage in, and how the 16 types are 16 different dynamic systems of interacting processes.  Type is a system of energy and balance – between extraversion and introversion and perceiving and judging.  And, this is a complex theory to learn and to teach; our job as practitioners is to take the complex and make it simple so that people can understand – but not so simple as to dilute the message – something that takes practice and re-grounding in the theory, to achieve. 

All of the fundamentals of type are spelled out in Myers’ text, Gifts Differing.  Myers’ text is so full of fundamental information, that my copy is highlighted and “dog earred” to death!  Whenever I have what I think to be a brilliant insight, I pull out Gifts Differing and I see that the so called “brilliant” idea is there in black and white; Myers  apparently knew the importance of understanding the fundamentals!