Classification by Type = The “Childish Parlor Game” “to stick labels on people…”
Carl Jung on “Types” – Anthology
What I have attempted in this book [Psychological Types] is essentially a critical psychology.
This fundamental tendency in my work has often been overlooked, and far too many readers have succumbed to the error of thinking that Chapter X (“General Descriptions of the Types”) represents the essential content and purpose of the book, in the sense that it provides a system of classification and a practical guide to a good judgment of human character.
Indeed, even in medical circles the opinion has got about that my method of treatment consists in fitting patients into this system and giving them corresponding “advice”.
This regrettable misunderstanding completely ignores the fact that this kind of classification is nothing but a childish parlour game, every bit as futile as the division of mankind into brachycephalics and dolichocephalics.
My typology is far rather a critical apparatus serving to sort out and organize the welter of empirical material, but not in any sense to stick labels on people at first sight.
It is not a physiognomy and not an anthropological system, but a critical psychology dealing with the organization and delimitation of psychic processes that can be shown to be typical. ~Carl Jung, The Correspondence of Victoria Ocampo, Count Keyserling and C G Jung Page 105 [Exerpt form C.G. Jung’s Introduction to Psychological Types Argentine Edition.
