“You see, you get your orientation, you get your bearings, in the chaotic abundance of impressions through the four functions, these four aspects of total human orientation.” – C. G. Jung
With this article, we are initiating a series of articles on the application of Jung’s types for individuation.Your comments and inquiries are most welcome! Please let us know if you find these useful or if there are other themes you would like us to cover.
We begin this series with two key terms defined by Jung in Volume VI: Orientation and Attitude.
Orientation and Attitude
These two terms, orientation and attitude, defined in Jung’s Volume VI: Psychological Types, are important for understanding how types tend to collaborate or oppose one another in the psychic conflict that induces individuation.
An attitude is a “readiness to act,” as Jung defined it, and applies to both directional attitudes and functional attitudes.
We might refer to Jung’s eight “types” as a composite attitudes consisting of a directional attitude joined to a functional attitude. Introverted thinking, for example, consists of both an introverted attitude and the functional attitude of thinking.
Orientation refers to what governs an attitude’s readiness to act. Each of the functional attitudes is governed by a principle. Thinking, for example, is governed by logic.
Each of the directional attitudes is governed by an orientation to the world without or the world within.
Combining a functional orientation with a directional orientation produces a composite orientation. Thinking, governed by logic, when joined to an introverted orientation to the world within, transforms logic in a way that makes it quite different from extraverted thinking.
Understanding the composite orientations and attitudes is essential for understanding Jung’s eight types. That understanding sheds light on how the types tend to collaborate or oppose one another.
The types of support and oppose one another on the psychic stage in a dynamic interplay that is the stuff of individuation.
J G Johnston
Author of Jung’s Indispensable Compass
12/1/2011