Modern Psychology: C. G. Jung’s Lectures at the ETH Zürich, 1933-1941
Lecture V 25th May, 1934
There are a great many questions about the last lecture.
The first asks if the feeling-sensation type is always a social bore?
They do not spend their whole lives in boring society, but this is the negative aspect of their type and they are incline d to have this effect
in social situations, but in their positive aspects they are often artists, poets, and especially musicians.
Then there are several questions relating to intuition, which is not surprising as it is exceedingly difficult to grasp, or to render tangible.
Its very essence is its intangibility.
Logical concepts are tangible and possible to grasp, but empirical concepts often intersect each other, you never see them separately and clearly.
Intuition is still more difficult to define clearly because it is an apparatus which is invisible, a perceptive function working
through the unconscious.
You cannot reduce intuition to the terms of the three other functions, though it can clothe itself in all of them, as we saw last time in
the examples of the hunter in the tree and the cigarette ends, but very often you cannot tell at all how intuitions come.
It is highly necessary for us to realize that we do not know everything, that we stand indeed only at the beginning of our knowledge, at
the very beginning of the things which it would be possible for us to know and intuition lives on this border of our knowledge.
Though intuition is perception via the unconscious, the contents of it often appear as finished totalities, its character is that of a given fact.
Spinoza thought it the highest type of knowledge that exists.
Intuition concerns itself with many fields.
Some people can intuit the weather, others can foresee the movements of the Stock Exchange, &c. &c.
Another question which is asked is why intuitives do not break the bank at roulette at Monte Carlo?
There was indeed a patient of mine , an intuitive, who, coming to the end of her money, travelled to Monte Carlo to recoup.
I protested that this was very dangerous but she replied that it would not be for her.
Later I saw her there and I asked her if she had done what she came for.
She replied “Not yet”, but every day she went and watched until her series turned up.
Then she staked for the first time and she always won.
I asked her why she did not go on and break the bank.
She replied because she only knew one or two series for certain and after that it was dangerous to go on, because she always lost.
Intuition is really like that, it can only be used to gain a certain modest advantage.
If an intuitive is really at his last penny, intuition appears to have an interest in just giving him enough to go on with but no more.
Intuitives are often very poor because they never wait for the harvest.
Every situation is a prison to them, they crave for new possibilities and can only use their function to a very limited extent in a situation.
It is as if it will only just nourish them, if you want more you must turn to another function.
We have four functions so as to be able to meet all situations.
Kant, who could think so marvellously, and could write “The Critique of Pure Reason” was sadly at a loss in personal situations
where he found himself forced to use his most inferior feeling.
There is what we might call a fifth function over all these four functions: the will.
This is a peculiar function set above the others with a certain quantity of disposable energy in direct relation to the ego.
It is like a mobile unit, not kept in any definite place, but at the direct disposal of the general of the army.
The ego is free to use this dynamic function, but only under certain conditions of its own.
It cannot be used under every condition.
If, for instance, you are very tired, and have already used all the energy available for it, then it is not in working order.
It is free in as far as it has available energy.
This is a product and a kind of inherited reservoir of civilized man.
Primitives have no will, it is won by culture and civilization.
It is not to be confuse d with instinct.
The primitives have only instinct.
When the will is dreamt of it is as a man-made instrument; a knife, or a sword, or something of that kind.
The primitive has plenty of instincts, but no will, things just happen to him, it is exceedingly important not to confuse will and instinct.
When I was on the Mt. Elgon I camped near a particularly primitive tribe whose speech was like the song of nature, and I told a runner
to take some letters to the white man who lived by the big beast [the train).
The man did not move, he took no interest.
I tried an interpreter, but there was still no interest, so the head boy had to bes ent for.
He said: “This is just a poor native”, [the head boy was just as black as the other,) “You cannot talk to him like that,
you must do it this way”.
Then with a whip and a great many gestures he got the man into a great state of excitement about the letters of the
white chief and about the other white chief waiting for them at the big beast and he drew a picture of the runner as the
arrow in between.
Suddenly the man dashed off and ran 120 kilometers without stopping.
This is absence of the will.
He understood the words but had no inclination whatever to go, so a rite d’ entree was necessary to get him started.
Among the Australian natives if a man is murdered by someone in the next tribe, it is of no use whatever to hold a council to tell
them about it for they are not in the least interested; they have to be worked up into a state of rage, pulled by the beard, have coitus
performed up on them, until they are really angry.
Then they dash off, and if they meet a man of the next tribe they kill him and the matter is settled.
But if they do not meet one soon their rage wears off and they go home and everything has to be started all over again.
A tribe is just a lazy mass, with no energy at its disposal, everything has to happen to it.
Will is always the sign of a high cultural level.
In this diagram we think of the conscious as an area or field, with sensation as the superior function.
It could, of course, be drawn equally well with any of th e other functions as the superior one.
The centre is the ego.
What is the ego?
This is a great secret, and a riddle which we cannot answer satisfactorily, but only very vaguely, for the sensations of the
body, thoughts, feelings, surroundings, etc. all go to make it up.
Nothing is conscious that is not related to the ego.
This further diagram includes other things which go towards making up the ego.
(1) is the zone of memories.
(2) is the zone of subjective portions.
We can have no thought which registers or becomes ours without something coming up from inside us to meet it.
We make the great mistake of thinking that children are born a tabula rasa, but this is not the case.
They are born with a vast inherited memory which contains a subjective content to meet everything which they
contact externally.
When someone says to us: “What do you think? ” we give out one thought and keep back all the others, for we always have many
more thoughts which we lock away in order to develop just the one.
This is often very wise for many of our thoughts are far too subjective for other people and the same is true of feelings,
sensations and intuitions.
We are very strange and unbearable inside to other people.
If it were not for this we should be without individuality and should be just termites.
The subjective portion stands before the ego and forms a sealed chamber already in the neighbourhood of the unconscious where
we keep everything which we do not and will not stand.
The ego is like a round ball, one side is rather plastic and passive and we are apt to project pieces of this on to other people.
We do not think “I had a dirty phantasy”, but, “someone roused it in me”.
(3) is the zone of affects and emotions.
Emotions are often confused with feelings but this is all wrong.
Feeling is a valuing function, whereas emotion is involuntary, in affect you are always a victim.
If I am a great artist, I can act an emotion, but this is not affect, I am not overcome by it.
If someone is terribly emotional we say: “Sleep on it till you are quieter”.
Affect is undomesticated primitivity, annoyance can still be a feeling, but when your head begins to burn and you find your
heart and pulse beat, then it has gone over into an emotion.
(4) is the zone of invasions where unconscious contents break in. ~Carl Jung, Lecture V 25May1934, Page 106-109.