The Birth of Personality

The coming to birth of personality, of persons who possess transcendent and potentially ennobling views of life, is the shining nexus of a long, long rugged evolutionary journey. The astonishing fact about that evolutionary struggle is that it tumbled uphill, pushed upward toward more elaborate modes of consciousness, to the sudden, unforeseen birth of personality.

By some uncanny means, forms of matter, imbued with life and endowed with reproductive capacity, enabled consciousness to evolve, to grow in refinement and complexity, and for personality to arrive as the crowning companion to consciousness. The long, patient peregrination over five hundred million years, from the first forms of single-cell non-teachable consciousness to complex self-directed forms, is the miraculous story of evolution. From amoebas and trilobites to the mammalian brain, organic forms grew increasingly receptive and complex.

Consciousness seems to have arisen by a kind of invisible ladder of ascent. Each of the eight forms of consciousness described by Jung could be counted as rungs on that ladder, until the final rungs enabled the birth of personality.

We can imagine that one of the first orientations of consciousness to arrive, so many hundreds of millions of years ago, would be a perception that could make sense of an outer world—the ability to quickly perceive the world out there. This form of consciousness varies of course by species, but in each case, it was an awareness of some kind of external objects. As it evolved into human consciousness, we refer to it as extraverted sensation—the accurate, detailed perception of objects in the world.

The ability to make judgments and decisions likely arrived early as a companion to perception—the process of thinking that makes orderly sense of what happens in the world. As it evolved and appeared in human form, we refer to it as extraverted thinking, oriented to applying logic to the objects and events of the external world.

Courage as a form of conscious choice became available sometime along that evolutionary cavalcade—the ability to stand firm in the face of danger, to protect one’s offspring, to consciously choose to struggle, fight, or protect. As it graduated to human form, it became an orientation consonant with its French root “cour” meaning heart. It evolved into to the noble and idealistic aspirations of the introverted feeling orientation. It became the orientation in human experience that builds character, that considers the questions of what ought to be, that forms ideals, and abides by deeply felt values.

Also in that evolutionary ascent, a consciousness that impelled discovery arose as
the impetus to learn more, to expand a field of awareness. As it developed in human form, we know it as introverted thinking, forever seeking to understand and derive meanings, to understand the holistic picture.

Then to varying degrees, cooperation appeared as a conscious endeavor—the desire to coordinate and relate, the social urge, the urge to abide in harmony with others. We know that urge, as it appears in human form, as extraverted feeling, empathetic to the needs and values of others.

With those five forms of consciousness, we have the higher mammals as our cousins—the mammals with whom we may often develop feelings of endearing companionship. Many of these mammals possess modes of perception or understanding that are superior to our own. The perceptions of sound, taste, touch, or sight, for example, may be significantly greater in other species. But with these mammals, possessing these first five modes of consciousness, we have an affinity that enables relationship.

The next significant mode of consciousness is likely absent in mammals, at least there is less evidence for it. It is the intuitive orientation that apprehends another reality, a reality that seems “more real than real.” Intuition includes the urge and ability to relate with a reality beyond the material world, to a reality from which prophets and mystics insist we must be “born.” Intuition, “the noblest gift of man,” as it is imaginatively oriented holistically to the experience of the inner life, forms the mode of consciousness we call introverted intuition.

It draws the other introverted orientations, introverted thinking and feeling, to the images it apprehends, enabling their further development to derive meaning and values that can direct the course of both the individual and civilization. Abstract concepts like Truth, Beauty, and Goodness can be considered and evaluated among the highly imaginative and conceptual contents of this new human consciousness.

Two other synoptic intuitive orientations enable consciousness to leap back in time and leap forward in vision. They engage life as though from a “million-year-old” consciousness that can reach back through history and also prophetically anticipate future events. These two are each oriented both to the inner and outer worlds simultaneously: introverted sensation and extraverted intuition. In combination with the other six, they enable a wisdom that can holistically understand the past and imaginatively forge a new future.

With these eight orientations of our conscious experience, the requisite foundation for personality seemed to arrive. And personality itself possesses a consciousness that eclipses these evolutionary eight. Persons are aware of their conscious experience and more, they are also aware of being aware. Personality unifies life experience over time, fully aware that the “I” who experienced life as an eight-year old identity is also the “I” experiencing life as an eighty-year old identity.

Personality unites and unifies all eight modes of conscious experience. For unique personality to be fully expressed, all eight evolutionary orientations are required. The full expression of the unique individual person is what Jung termed individuation. Of all of the purposes and efforts that occupy our lives, individuation—the unified expression of unique personality—is one of the most important, enriching ourselves individually, and enriching the whole fabric of civilization in the process, both in this world and beyond.

J G Johnston
Author of Jung’s Indispensable Compass

1/8/2021