Early Jung, Late Jung

Jung: four mental functions

It is my understanding that the human personality, in its current state of evolution (and for the foreseeable future), rests upon a basis of four mental functions and four unconscious states.

The attributes of the adult personality emerge as the child develops and what we regard as mentality is defined by; an interaction of the mental functions in the material environment, combined with the influence of the unconscious as derived from its non-temporal, non-material basis. Neither is strictly independent of each other as they are brought into coincidence by The Marriage Quaternity -  the human cultural archetype, without which, no human conscious or emotional evolution takes place.
  
The mental functions were analysed by Jung in the following way : Sensation (sense perception), Intuition (unconscious synthesis), Feeling (evaluation) and Thinking (abstract/synthesis).
These functions are limited, rather in the manner of genetic regression to the mean. In other words, no one function is allowed to grow disproportionately beyond the other functions - as determined by the environment in which they are expressed. However, mankind's function as a developing animal in a hostile environment has optimised a combination of these mental functions to ensure survival. This has meant that the optimal mental functions are Sensation and Intuition for men and Intuition and Feeling for women - (Jung's use of the word 'feeling' is a mistranslation from his native tongue and should not be confused with the more general term to describe an outpouring of emotion or affect, e.g, feeling emotional). Jung asserted that these functions operated in tandem and through the medium of what he called extraversion and introversion. One can see from this explanation that for most of human development the most appropriate functions would be turned outwards - towards the environment. In that sense the functions operate upon the subject's mind while it is in a passive state (of active emotional participation). Modern examples of passive mental function is demonstrated by such activities as, watching films and television, listening to music, participating in sport. Under these circumstances, introversion occurs as a recessive tendency (to the prevalence of extraversion).  Introversion is characterised by self reflection, a state extraverts only resort to in desperation, but the differentiation is more subtle in effect and points to a closer link between introversion and the teleological function of unconscious - as experience is always felt as personally implicating subjectivity. Extroverts therefore regard experience as contingent, Introverts regard it as inherent. Neither state is completely fixed for the individual, but the orientation becomes reinforced and habitual over time as a way of interpreting and dealing with experience.

 Mankind's Natural Specification


Like all other natural creatures, man expresses a range of optimised skills as a form of natural specification - through which originally the creature could survive. In animals, it is a purely unconscious process of being linked to a strict, or more general environment. So, for mankind, Specification (as a new definition) was originally limited to different, but scarcely diversified roles, within the tribe. As teleology exerted its influence and tribal life developed into a richer form of cultural expression, Specification diversified into more complex skills. We can see for instance that with the introduction of tools, firstly fashioned by each individual as a group skill, during later periods of group life and to serve the growing social complexity brought about by teleology, expert artizans arose. The inheritance of this tendency from the period of the industrial revolution and before, is seen in the current specialisations and segregations of the technological revolution.

The four pillars of the human unconscious - The Marriage Quaternity

The strength of The Marriage Quaternity: it ring fences human development to one cultural epoch.
   
The Unconscious is defined by a series of self demonstrative and autonomous conditions that are accessible through psychological analysis:

The Persona, which has a borderline unconscious/conscious orientation — the habitual mask.

The Shadow, which is an all encompassing unconscious state — subject to growing repression as the child develops from the human personalities collective basis. The Shadow holds, not only the personal, repressed emotional trauma's, but also the capacity for the personality to transcend its material basis and become objectified. The archetypes that can ultimately bring this into being are also expressed into consciousness through the Shadow...

The Anima/Animus

Essentially, the soul of a human


The Wise Old Man

The adjunct to the central archetype and therefore God.