Carl Jung on Feeling Lexicon
Feeling:
The psychological function that evaluates or judges what something or someone is worth.
A feeling is as indisputable a reality as the existence of an idea. [“The Psychology of the Transference,” CW 16, par. 531.]
The feeling function is the basis for “fight or flight” decisions. As a subjective process, it may be quite independent of external stimuli. In Jung’s view it is a rational function, like thinking, in that it is decisively influenced not by perception (as are the functions of sensation and intuition) but by reflection. A person whose overall attitude is oriented by the feeling function is called a feeling type.
In everyday usage, feeling is often confused with emotion. The latter, more appropriately called affect, is the result of an activated complex. Feeling not contaminated by affect can be quite cold.
Feeling is distinguished from affect by the fact that it produces no perceptible physical innervations, i.e., neither more nor less than an ordinary thinking process. [“Definitions,” CW 6, par. 725.]
