The Four Functions: A Conceptual Analysis

An Important Part of Jung's model of the psyche concerns the four functions of thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. Application of this theory can lead to valuable insights. However, the theory is often difficult to apply in detail, and even experienced analysts can show uncertainty or disagreement about the function-type of a particular person.

A major reason for this difficulty seems to be the lack of exact definitions of each function in terms of moment-to-moment activities, for the descriptions in Psychological types are, as Jung says, simplified descriptions of the average behaviour of persons belonging to each of the eight types. They are descriptions at the clinical level of syndromes covering such diverse features as a person's ability, achievement, motivation and present activity. These do not always go together; a professor on holiday or in love may be no longer using only his thinking function, and at that time the different criteria of his type may well give conflicting results.

Furthermore, to describe someone who is not a pure type cannot be done with precision in terms only of the eight pure types. To describe such mixed or fluctuating types of people accurately needs more detailed concepts. One needs to be able to describe the proportion, say, of thinking and feeling not only in a life-history but in a single act. The level of description must pass, so to speak, from gross anatomy to detailed histology. As the writer has previously argued (1967), this transition from description of general types to independent assessment of the correlated variables which compose them is characteristic of each science as it progresses.

A previous paper by the writer (ibid.) attempted to perform this analysis for the concepts of extraversion and libido. With those concepts, the analysis brought them into a form where they could be compared with results from experimental personality study. With the four functions, there is a greater amount of pr