Carl Jung on Introvert Anthology
You know that one of the unfortunate qualities of introverts is that they so often cannot help putting the wrong foot forward. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 35-36.
Moreover there are not a few introverts who are so painfully aware of the shortcomings of their attitude that they have learned to imitate the extraverts and behave accordingly, and vice versa there are extraverts who like to give themselves the air of the introvert because they think they are then more interesting. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565
In pathological cases, as you know, unconscious love also becomes a source of heightened fear of the object for the introvert, and, conversely, unconscious fear becomes a source of powerful attraction to the object for the extravert. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The introvert does feel, too, and very intensely so, only in a different way than the extravert does. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
Whereas the extravert needs the object to bring his type to perfection and to cleanse his feeling, the introvert experiences this as a horrible violation and disrespect of his personality, because he absolutely refuses to be, so to speak, the chemical dry cleaner for the feelings of extraverts. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
This is not the case in the introvert. His representation of things is inadequate, precisely because of the lack of feeling- into [the object]. His thinking is in accordance with outer reality, but not with his own inner reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
This explains the often- observed fact that the introvert thinks and preaches all sorts of nice things but does not do them himself, in fact, does the contrary; whereas the extravert does all sorts of good and nice things but does not think them, in fact, often the contrary. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The extravert knows, by feeling himself into others, by what human means people can be won over, whereas the introvert tries to create values in himself with which he tries to impress and force others toward him, or even bring them to his knees. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
Conversely, the introvert strains the pleasure- unpleasure mechanism in his unconscious by the conscious, idealistic desire to create the highest values proper to force others to come to him, thus degrading people to objects of his desire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The ideally oriented introverted person is faced with the fact that he scares away from himself precisely the human love and joy that he is really trying to find behind all his desire to impress and to be superior, and that he keeps and chains to himself only those inferior persons who know best how to cater to his desire. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
While the introvert’s conscious attitude is an impersonal and just attitude of power, his unconscious attitude aims at inferior lust and pleasure; and while the extravert’s conscious attitude is a personal love for human beings, his unconscious attitude aims at unjust, tyrannical power. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
I would say: the introvert also tries, through the hypothesis of abstraction, to reach the object, actually reality, which seems to him chaotic only because of the projection of his unused and therefore undeveloped feeling. He tries to conquer the object by thinking. But he wants to reach the object quite as much as the extravert. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The only goal for the ideally oriented introvert is the production of impersonal, imperative values, and for the equally ideally oriented extravert the only goal is the love for the object. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The fear the introvert feels rests on the unconscious assumption that the object is too much animated, and this is a part of the ancient belief in magic. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 65
The extravert is controlled by his relation to the thing without, the introvert by his relation to the thing within. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 64
The conscious extravert values his connection with the outer object and fears his own inner self. The introvert has no fear of himself, but great fear of the object, which he comes to endow with extraordinary terrors. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 65
The extravert, on the other hand, takes his unconscious material in an introverted way, that is, with extreme caution and with many incantations to exorcise the inner power the object exercises over him. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 66
I started with the primitive idea of the flowing out and the flowing in of energy, and from this I constructed the theory of the introverted and extraverted types. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 86
As I am an introverted intellectual my anima contains feeling [that is] quite blind. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 100
Although I have never made a statistique of this kind I have always been impressed by the fact that pipe-smokers are usually introverted. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565
The serpent shows the way to hidden things and expresses the introverting libido, which leads man to go beyond the point of safety, and beyond the limits of consciousness, as expressed by the deep crater. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 102
Certainly seeing the top and the bottom is an introverted attitude, but that is just the place the introvert fills. He has distance between himself and the object and so is sensitive to types—he can separate and discriminate. He does not want too many facts and ideas about. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 94
The extravert is always calling for facts and more facts. He usually has one great idea, a fat idea you might say, that will stand for a unity back of all these facts, but the introvert wants to split that very fat idea. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 94
Introverts want to see little things grow big and big things grow little. Extraverts like great things—they do not want to see good things going into worse, but always into better. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 94
Moreover, the introvert leans toward accepting enantiodromia easily, because such a concept robs the object of much power, while the extravert, having no desire to minimize the importance of the object, is willing to credit it with power. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 94
In a Platonist’s idea of life, there is always a limited number of primordial images, but still there are many, not just one—so the introvert has the tendency to be polytheistic. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 95
There followed much discussion here and there among friends and acquaintances, through which I found that I had the tendency to project my inferior extraverted side into my extraverted friends, and they their introverted sides into me. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 33
Little by little I made a discovery that was shocking to me, namely the fact of this extraverted personality, which every introvert carries within him in his unconscious, and which I had been projecting upon my friends to their detriment. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 33
The author shows an amazingly sympathetic knowledge of the introvert of the thinking type, and hardly less for the other types. . . . Jung has revealed the inner kingdom of the soul marvelously well and has made the signal discovery of the value of phantasy. His book has a manifold reach and grasp, and many reviews with quite different subject matter could be written about it.” ~Sonu Shamdasani, Introduction 1925 Seminar, Page xi
The extravert feels prospectively, the introvert retrospectively, so that the latter remains longer under the impression of the difficulty. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86
The striving for the creation of impersonal values deprives the introvert of a considerable sum of energy in the development of his personality, so that he, just as much as the extravert, in a certain sense falls behind himself (though in the opposite way than does the extravert). ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86
The abstract thinking of the introvert is a parallel to this. It is so much in accordance with outer reality that unconsciously it is completely saturated with, and contingent upon, the lusting for power in the world. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid, Pages 74-86
What the extravert calls human is just “all too human” for the introvert. What the introvert calls human is airy and gaseous for the other. ~Carl Jung, Hans Schmid Guisan Letters, Pages 100-114
I have to remark, by the way, that there is at least one thing the introvert can do better than the extravert, and that is thinking. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142
The extravert (the ideal type) must realize his feeling, the corresponding introvert his thinking. In this process, the extravert notices that his feeling is pregnant with thoughts; the introvert, that his thinking is full of feelings. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142
An introvert who does not outgrow his constant thinking is just as untenable as an extravert who cannot get out of his constant feeling. ~Carl Jung, Han Guisan Schmid, Pages 131-142
Personally a creative man can be an introvert, but in his work he is an extravert and vice versa. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302
His [Freud] general way of living was a genuinely introverted style, whereas Adler, whom I met as a young man, being of my age, gave me the impression of a neurotic introvert, in which case there is always a doubt as to the definite type. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302
Adler, I suppose, was personally never a real introvert, therefore as soon as he had a certain success he began to develop an extraverted behaviour. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 301-302
No culture is ever really complete, for it always swings more towards one side or the other. Sometimes the cultural idea is extraverted, and then the chief value lies with the object and man’s relation to it; sometimes it is introverted, and then the chief value lies with the subject and his relation to the idea. In the former case, culture takes on a collective character, in the latter an individual one. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 110
The extraverted tendency of the West and the introverted tendency of the East have one important purpose in common both make desperate efforts to conquer the mere naturalness of life. It is the assertion of mind over matter, the opus contra naturam, a symptom of the youthfulness of man, still delighting in the use of the most powerful weapon ever devised by nature the conscious mind. The afternoon of humanity, in a distant future, may yet evolve a different ideal. In time, even conquest will cease to be the dream. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 787
He went on to say that when speaking to an extravert he has to cut down his thought; also when he is speaking to an introvert he has to cut down, for the thought of an introvert, even if expanded into a book, would not be fully expressed …. ~E. Harding, Conversations with Jung, Page 8
In short, the introvert thinks with the object, the extravert feels with it. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 74-86
Everyone whose attitude is introverted thinks, feels, and acts in a way that clearly demonstrates that the subject is the prime motivating factor and that the object is of secondary importance. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Par 769.
The introverted thinker is very much in need of a developed feeling, i .e., of a less autoerotic, sentimental, melodramatic and emotional relatedness to people and things. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 163-174
It should also be noted that my characterization of Adler and Freud as, respectively, introverted and extraverted does not refer to them personally but only to their outward demeanour. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 349-350
That does not prevent me from having found heavy cigarette-smokers among my introverts and not a few pipe-smokers among the extraverts, but normally with empty pipes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 564-565
Adler’s character, on the contrary, was introverted in so far as he gave paramount importance to the power of the ego. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 349-350
It is more likely that in the unconscious of the introvert there is a love for the object that compensates his fear of it, while in the unconscious of the extravert there is a fear that compensates his love for the object. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The introvert needs the object for his thinking, because it is precisely via the object that he adapts to outer reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The term “introversion” thus describes an inward turning of the psychic energy, which I called “libido,” because the introvert does not comprehend the object directly, but by means of abstraction, that is, by a thinking process that is inserted between himself and the object. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Guisan Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
The attitude he [the introvert] assumes toward the object is a certain rejection, therefore, which can even develop into a kind of fear of the object. His primary reaction toward the object is actually not love but rather fear. The ancients knew these two original powers well, the eros and phobos. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
Introvert and Extrovert: The introvert discovers the possibility of being extroverted in the transference. The extrovert draws back on himself; he will become aware of the possibility of experiencing himself. The introvert discovers himself by learning the possibility of pouring himself out to the analyst. It is a discovery of his unconscious. ~Carl Jung; Cornwall Seminar; Page 8.
To Western man, the meaninglessness of a merely static universe is unbearable. He must assume that it has meaning. The Oriental does not need to make this assumption; rather, he himself embodies it. Whereas the Occidental feels the need to complete the meaning of the world, the Oriental strives for the fulfilment of the meaning in man, stripping the world and existence from himself (Buddha). I would say that both are right.
Western man seems predominantly extraverted, Eastern man predominantly introverted. The former projects the meaning and considers that it exists in objects; the latter feels the meaning in himself. But the meaning is both within and without. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 317.
Possession caused by the anima or animus presents a different picture. . . .In the state of possession both figures lose their charm and their values; they retain them only when they are turned away from the world, in the introverted state, when they serve as bridges to the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para 222f.
There is no such thing as a pure ‐ extrovert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 23.
Those [Introvert and Extrovert] are only terms to designate a certain penchant, a certain tendency. For instance, the tendency to be more influenced by environmental influences, or more influenced by the subjective fact—that’s all. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 23.
I visualize the process of abstraction as a withdrawal of libido from the object, as a backflow of value from the object into a subjective, abstract content. For me, therefore, abstraction amounts to an energic devaluation of the object. In other words, abstraction is an introverting movement of libido. ~Carl Jung; CW 4; par. 679.
Around the eighth year there is a transition to ego consciousness, as we have already seen in previous children’s dreams. The child breaks away from the extremely close relatedness with the familial milieu; he has already acquired a certain experience of the world, and the libido, which had up to then been tied to the parents, detaches itself from them and often is introverted. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 323.
Apotropaic: Descriptive of “magical thinking,” based on the desire to depotentiate the influence of an object or person. Apotropaic actions are characteristic of introversion as a mode of psychological orientation. I have seen an introverted child who made his first attempts to walk only after he had learned the names of all the objects in the room he might touch. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, par. 897.
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