Carl Jung is known for being one of the most influential individuals in the fields of psychotherapy and psychiatry. He is perhaps most famous for being the father of analytical psychology, which revolutionized the study of individuals and personality characteristics in relation to the subconscious and conscious minds.

Jung created the theory that individuals are governed by four basic psychic functions that include intuition, sensation, feeling, and thinking. Jung theorized that these unconscious psychic functions could become conscious and influence people’s personalities, which accounted for the wide range in how people think and behave.

The four physiologies

Jung created four physiologies, or personality types as they later became known, that influenced how people perceived the world around them and how they responded to it. These four types could be classified as opposites, although according to Jung they served more as complementary personality traits.

Jung defined sensing as the formation of logical conclusions based on sensory perceptions. This intellectual cognition allows different people to sense and perceive the world in different ways based on how they cognitively process this information available to them using their five senses. Intuition, on the other hand, refers to the process of drawing conclusions and making connections beyond the sensory information.

Thinking refers to the process of evaluating information by objective and logical means. Feeling is a more subjective judgment type, where personal and situational preference and information comes into play. Jung created the four physiologies as opposites: thinking and feeling, sensing and intuition. Although each was created in opposition to the other, all the functions operate within an individual’s consciousness and subconscious to create their world view and inform their beliefs and behaviors.

Jung was also the founder of the idea of the attitudinal types of introversion and extroversion, in addition to the four physiologies. An introvert gets their energy from internal sources while an extrovert draws their energy from other people. Jung used these psychic functions to explore the differences in personality and expression he saw in his work.

Utilizing the four physiologies

Each function provides its own knowledge base by which an individual’s personality is allowed to shine through. Jung used these psychic functions to classify the empirical information he had gathered about individuals and their characteristics; he was less interested in finding the foundations of these physiologies in the human brain. Jung theorized that the four psychic functions could operate equally, but that people sometimes have functions that operate stronger and more consciously than the others.

We all know people who exemplify Jung’s four physiologies in different ways: some people are highly sensory, relying on the empirical information they can gather to make sense of the world around them. Others are highly intuitive, sensing what cannot always be detected by traditional means. Some individuals rely on feeling to make their way through the world while others rely heavily on their thought processes and analytical way of viewing things to make decisions. Jung’s discovery of these essential personality functions has truly changed how we view our selves and others.

Insights Discovery is based squarely on Jung’s theories, and as such, is an invaluable tool in helping people understand themselves, and others. If you would like further help in identifying yourself or someone you know who is one of Jung’s physiologies, schedule me, Scott Schwefel, as your keynote speaker. I will come to your group and address the differences in personalities in a truthful, fun, and easy-to-understand way. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to share my blogs with the color energies you work with!