Monday, 5 November 2007
extraverted-feeling
"In precisely the same way as extraverted thinking strives to rid itself of subjective innfluences, extraverted feeling has to undergo a process of differentiation before it is finally denuded of every subjective trimming. The valuations resulting from the act of feeling either corresponds directly with objective values or accord with traditional and generally accepted standards.
This kind of feeling is very largely responsible for the fact that so many people flock to the theatre or concerts, or go to church, and do so more over with their feelings correctly adjusted... In these matters extraverted feeling proves itself a creative factor. Without it a harmonious social life would be impossible" [596/355]
The extraverted-feeling attitude is directly responsible for the dominance of consensus reality. Does this make extraverted feeling the norm?
"[as soon as the object gains ascendancy] The force of extraverted feeling then pulls the personality into the object, the object assimilates him, whereupon the personal quality of the feeling, which constitutes its chief charm, disappears. It becomes cold, "unfeeling", untrustworthy. It has ulterior motives, or at least makes an impartial observer suspect them... one suspects a post, or that the person is acting even though he may be quite unconscious of any egocentric motives. Over-extraverted feeling may satisfy aestheitc expectations, but it does not speak to the heart; it appeals merely to the senses, or worst still - to reason." [596/355]
This kind of feeling is very largely responsible for the fact that so many people flock to the theatre or concerts, or go to church, and do so more over with their feelings correctly adjusted... In these matters extraverted feeling proves itself a creative factor. Without it a harmonious social life would be impossible" [596/355]
The extraverted-feeling attitude is directly responsible for the dominance of consensus reality. Does this make extraverted feeling the norm?
"[as soon as the object gains ascendancy] The force of extraverted feeling then pulls the personality into the object, the object assimilates him, whereupon the personal quality of the feeling, which constitutes its chief charm, disappears. It becomes cold, "unfeeling", untrustworthy. It has ulterior motives, or at least makes an impartial observer suspect them... one suspects a post, or that the person is acting even though he may be quite unconscious of any egocentric motives. Over-extraverted feeling may satisfy aestheitc expectations, but it does not speak to the heart; it appeals merely to the senses, or worst still - to reason." [596/355]
The extraverted-thinking type
When the extreme extraverted thinking model is faced with a 'problem' requiring a certain subjective/introverted perspective to truely understand and grap a thing, he authomatically reduces the problem to his own accumulated objective/extraverted knowledge and experience. Viewing the 'problem' through this filter gives an extremely narrow view of the 'problem', with only a few molecules of understanding beingh attracted to and sticking to his pre-existant knowledge/experience. This personality type appears quite often in the short stories of Franz Kafka.
"it is a fact of experience that the basic psychological functions seldom or never all have the same strength or degree of development in the same individual. As a rule, one or the other function predominates in both strenth and development." [584/346]
The basic psychological functions are split into 5 groups under the two headings: Extraverted / Introverted
These are: Thinking/Feeling/Rational/Sensation/Intuition
Thusly is Jung's model of being mapped.
"[the extraverted-thinking] type will, by definition, be a man [Or woman. Use yr imagination peoples!] whose constant endeavor - in so far, of course, as he is a pure type [if such a thing exists in the world] - is to make all his activities dependant on intellectual conclusions, which in the last resort are always orientated by objective data, whether these be external facts or generally accepted ideas." [585/346]
I think what Jung is trying to say in his use of the term 'last resort' is that if the individual can't think it out for himself he will rely on preconceived external data.
The objective-thinking type seems, to me, to embody the personalities of the majority of politicians/right wing nut jobs.
"Their best aspect is to be found at the peiphery of their sphere of influence. The deeper we penetrate into their own power province the more we feel the unfavourable effects of their tyranny." [586/348]
"The thinking of the extraverted type is postivie i.e., productive. It leads to the discovery of new facts or to general conceptions based on disparate empirical material. It is usually synthetic too. Even when it analyses it constructs, because it is always advancing beyond the analysis to a new combination, to a further conception which reunites the analysed material in a different way or adds something to it. One could call this kind of judgement predictive. A characteristic feature, at any rate, is that it is never absolutely depreciative or destructive, since it always substitutes a fresh value for the one destroyed. this is because the thinking of this type is the main channel into which his vital energy flows. The steady flow of life manifests itself in his thinking, so that his thought has a progressive, creative quality. It is not stagnant or repressive. But it can become so if it fails to retain prior place in his consciousness. In that case it loses the quality of a positive, vital activity. It follows in the wake of other functions and becomes Epimethean [an afterthought]. Plagued by afterthoughts, contenting itself with constant broodings on things past and gone, chewing them over in an effort to anlyse and digest them. Since the creative element is now lodged in another function, thinking no longer progresses: It stagnates. Judgement takes on a distinct quality of inherence: It confines itlsef entirely to the range of the given material, nowhere overstepping it. It is satisfied with more or less abstract statements which do not impart any value to the material which in not already inherent in it. Such judgements are always orientated to the object, and they infirm nothing more about an experience than its objective and intrinsic meaning." [592-593/351-352]
"Its habitual mode is best described by the two words "nothing but". Goethe personifed this thinking in the figure of mephistopheles."
"Whenever somebody defends or advocates a cause, negative thinking never asks its importance but simply: "What does he get out of this?""
"The trick [to pure extraverted-thinking] is to make it appear dependant on something quite common place."
"it is a fact of experience that the basic psychological functions seldom or never all have the same strength or degree of development in the same individual. As a rule, one or the other function predominates in both strenth and development." [584/346]
The basic psychological functions are split into 5 groups under the two headings: Extraverted / Introverted
These are: Thinking/Feeling/Rational/Sensation/Intuition
Thusly is Jung's model of being mapped.
"[the extraverted-thinking] type will, by definition, be a man [Or woman. Use yr imagination peoples!] whose constant endeavor - in so far, of course, as he is a pure type [if such a thing exists in the world] - is to make all his activities dependant on intellectual conclusions, which in the last resort are always orientated by objective data, whether these be external facts or generally accepted ideas." [585/346]
I think what Jung is trying to say in his use of the term 'last resort' is that if the individual can't think it out for himself he will rely on preconceived external data.
The objective-thinking type seems, to me, to embody the personalities of the majority of politicians/right wing nut jobs.
"Their best aspect is to be found at the peiphery of their sphere of influence. The deeper we penetrate into their own power province the more we feel the unfavourable effects of their tyranny." [586/348]
"The thinking of the extraverted type is postivie i.e., productive. It leads to the discovery of new facts or to general conceptions based on disparate empirical material. It is usually synthetic too. Even when it analyses it constructs, because it is always advancing beyond the analysis to a new combination, to a further conception which reunites the analysed material in a different way or adds something to it. One could call this kind of judgement predictive. A characteristic feature, at any rate, is that it is never absolutely depreciative or destructive, since it always substitutes a fresh value for the one destroyed. this is because the thinking of this type is the main channel into which his vital energy flows. The steady flow of life manifests itself in his thinking, so that his thought has a progressive, creative quality. It is not stagnant or repressive. But it can become so if it fails to retain prior place in his consciousness. In that case it loses the quality of a positive, vital activity. It follows in the wake of other functions and becomes Epimethean [an afterthought]. Plagued by afterthoughts, contenting itself with constant broodings on things past and gone, chewing them over in an effort to anlyse and digest them. Since the creative element is now lodged in another function, thinking no longer progresses: It stagnates. Judgement takes on a distinct quality of inherence: It confines itlsef entirely to the range of the given material, nowhere overstepping it. It is satisfied with more or less abstract statements which do not impart any value to the material which in not already inherent in it. Such judgements are always orientated to the object, and they infirm nothing more about an experience than its objective and intrinsic meaning." [592-593/351-352]
"Its habitual mode is best described by the two words "nothing but". Goethe personifed this thinking in the figure of mephistopheles."
Everything in its right place.
"Whenever somebody defends or advocates a cause, negative thinking never asks its importance but simply: "What does he get out of this?""
"The trick [to pure extraverted-thinking] is to make it appear dependant on something quite common place."
Saturday, 13 October 2007
notes on jungian psychological types :: part 1 - The Extraverted/Introverted divide
the parenthisised doohickies at the end of each quote refer to the page numbers in C. G. Jung's Psychological types. The first number refers to the page, the second number refers to the paragraph. As each edition has varying page numbers yr best bet is to refer to paragraphs numbers if you wanna reference the original work.
I shall be embarking on a series of posts concerning Jungian Psychological Types for the purposes of character development in fiction. The notes for which i shall be uploading here for safekeeping and for anyone else to make use of. Afterall, not everybody can just go down their local university library and look through The Collected Works of C. G. Jung for their own personal satisfaction. As I am reading them in the library, and therefore having limited access to them, i will be updating the posts as new information and reflections become available.
The Extraverted/Introverted Type
So, it seems, according to Jung, that your one or t'other, and that the extraverted type relates his entire existence to external objects; be they people, projects, shiny things, whatever. He has no time for the subjective, merely the objective. He lives an 'objective' existence (if such a thing can exist in our post-post-modern times) :
( It should be noted that Jung goes on to make further distinctions between types of Extraverted and Introverted types, little sub-groups if you will. I ain't got to that bit yet. In fact, I ain't even finished the Extraverted section. )
What does this mean for the screenwriter if the extraverted reacts to external objects, and the introverted with his own internal subjectivity? Surely, within a film script, protagonists must be of the extraverted type because, according to the screenwriting guru types, Protagonists are defined by action/reaction? (Okay, this may not be the complete truth, but stay with me here).
What if the external objects are in fact manifestations of the protagonists subjectivity? That everything within the diagesis can in fact be mapped, directly or indirectly, back to the protagonists unconscious? What if that's why they came into existence in the first place? If you map your protagonists' conscious/unconscious first, then develop the story and sub-characters second, what kind of film are you writing? How does this effect everything? Does this open you up to new realms of creative expression, or just picking a way to filter that creative expression in the first place?
( i'm thinking outloud here, btw )
towit:
Consider the play of the extraverted/external and Introverted/internal outlook in both Julian and Gethin, with each sliding between the these two extremes throughout the plot, in a kind of counterpoint. A character in a film could be considered extraverted by the very nature of the medium i.e. external factors (preassures cause the actions of the protagonists and sub-characters) but this does not mean that these external forces cannot be, in actuality, manifestations of the internal.
As there are two Protagonists (Julian and Gethin) in this paticular narrative, and neither one supercedes the other, do they in fact become in actuality two sides of the same character? Is this a useful way of looking at them? Also, as they also represent a comedy double-act, is this what the comedy double-act can be viewed as?
"this is the extraverts danger: he gets sucked into objects and completely loses himself to them." (565/336)
the subjective/introverted world becomes manifest in his unconscious, in a kind of mirror. This is all fine and dandy, as long as the individual in question doesn't 'completely lose himself' to his objects:
"It is an outstanding peculiarity of unconscious impulses that, when deprived of energy by lack of conscious recognition, they take on a destructive character, and this happens as soon as they cease to be compensatory. Their compensatory function ceases as soon as they reach a depth corresponding to a cultural level absolutely incompatible with our own. From this moment the unconcious impulses form a block in every way opposed to the conscious attitude, and its very existence leads to open conflict." ( 574/340 )
( It should be noted that Jung goes on to make further distinctions between types of Extraverted and Introverted types, little sub-groups if you will. I ain't got to that bit yet. In fact, I ain't even finished the Extraverted section. )
What does this mean for the screenwriter if the extraverted reacts to external objects, and the introverted with his own internal subjectivity? Surely, within a film script, protagonists must be of the extraverted type because, according to the screenwriting guru types, Protagonists are defined by action/reaction? (Okay, this may not be the complete truth, but stay with me here).
What if the external objects are in fact manifestations of the protagonists subjectivity? That everything within the diagesis can in fact be mapped, directly or indirectly, back to the protagonists unconscious? What if that's why they came into existence in the first place? If you map your protagonists' conscious/unconscious first, then develop the story and sub-characters second, what kind of film are you writing? How does this effect everything? Does this open you up to new realms of creative expression, or just picking a way to filter that creative expression in the first place?
( i'm thinking outloud here, btw )
towit:
Consider the play of the extraverted/external and Introverted/internal outlook in both Julian and Gethin, with each sliding between the these two extremes throughout the plot, in a kind of counterpoint. A character in a film could be considered extraverted by the very nature of the medium i.e. external factors (preassures cause the actions of the protagonists and sub-characters) but this does not mean that these external forces cannot be, in actuality, manifestations of the internal.
As there are two Protagonists (Julian and Gethin) in this paticular narrative, and neither one supercedes the other, do they in fact become in actuality two sides of the same character? Is this a useful way of looking at them? Also, as they also represent a comedy double-act, is this what the comedy double-act can be viewed as?
FURTHER STUDY: psychological types of comedy double-acts
"A normal extroverted attitude does not, of course, mean that the individual invariably behaves in accordance with the extraverted schema. Even in the same individual many psychological processes may be observed that involve the mechanism of introversion. We call a mode of behavior extraverted only when the mechanism of extraversion predominates. In these caesd the most differentiated functions are in part unconscious and far less under the control of consciousness." [575/340]
"...There is a constant influx of unconscious contents into the conscious psychological process, to such a degree that at times it is hard for the observer to decide which character traits belong to the conscious and which to the unconscious personality." [576/341]
"Introverted thinking then appears as something quite arbitarry [to the extraverted thinker] while extraverted thinking seems dull and banal [to the introverted thinker]. Thus the two orientations are incessantly at war." [581/345]
Friday, 5 October 2007
Sunday, 2 September 2007
notes from 'Skateboarding, space and the city' (Iain Borden)
"On one level this activity appears as urban escapism... it was a repositioning of the urban... The modernist spa e of surburbia was found, adapted and reconveived as another kind of space, as a concrete wave." (refers to erly surf-style skating) (p.33)
"New hillside housing tracts lost their hideous urban negativity and emerged from the metamorphosis as a smooth uncrowded ribbons of winding joy." (33)
"This recombination of body, image, thought and action lies at the heart of skateboarding - an integration of abstract and concrete, object and performance..."
"the third stage [of skating up a bank that goes vertical] is that stalling space-time where the skater reaches the top of the trajectory, hangs momentarily, and begins the kick-turn - for the skater, this is a highly phsyical yet simultaneously fantastical and dream-like experience, where space-time are confronted and frozen in a dynamic, yet stable instance." (35)
"these aural salvos remind us that 'space is listened for, in fact, as much as seen, and heard before it comes into view," that hearing mediates between the spatial body and the world outside it, and that it is therefore not only in a cathedral or cloister that 'space is measured by ear'. This is 'sensuous geography' created by a phenomonal experience of architecture, a 'sensory space' constituted by an "unconsciously" dramatised interplay of relay points and obstacles, reflections, references, mirrors and echoes." (35)
note: 'sensuous geographies' (Paul Rodaway)
"...'working the surface' involved thinking less about the pool wall as a concrete wave, and more as an element which, together with the skateboard and skater's own body, could be recombined into an excited body-centric space." (36)
"New hillside housing tracts lost their hideous urban negativity and emerged from the metamorphosis as a smooth uncrowded ribbons of winding joy." (33)
"This recombination of body, image, thought and action lies at the heart of skateboarding - an integration of abstract and concrete, object and performance..."
"the third stage [of skating up a bank that goes vertical] is that stalling space-time where the skater reaches the top of the trajectory, hangs momentarily, and begins the kick-turn - for the skater, this is a highly phsyical yet simultaneously fantastical and dream-like experience, where space-time are confronted and frozen in a dynamic, yet stable instance." (35)
"these aural salvos remind us that 'space is listened for, in fact, as much as seen, and heard before it comes into view," that hearing mediates between the spatial body and the world outside it, and that it is therefore not only in a cathedral or cloister that 'space is measured by ear'. This is 'sensuous geography' created by a phenomonal experience of architecture, a 'sensory space' constituted by an "unconsciously" dramatised interplay of relay points and obstacles, reflections, references, mirrors and echoes." (35)
note: 'sensuous geographies' (Paul Rodaway)
"...'working the surface' involved thinking less about the pool wall as a concrete wave, and more as an element which, together with the skateboard and skater's own body, could be recombined into an excited body-centric space." (36)
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