What We Mean When We Say "Feeling is Not About Emotions."

I've been studying for my comprehensive exams, which are in early January. While reading Hume, I came across the terms "thinking" and "feeling." He used the term somewhat differently from Jung, but it got me curious, so I pulled out Psychological Types and turned to his definition of feeling. It really clarified the difference between Feeling and emotion for me.

A lot of people like to just treat Jung's distinction as some technical minutiae that complicates understanding. This is inaccurate, but understandably so, since many MBTI authors are woefully inconsistent when they distinguish the two. They'll give lip service to it only in type selection, then turn around and talk about thinking types being detached and unemotional. Type descriptions frequently conflate the two. Additionally, perhaps influenced by Keirsey (who did, in fact, present a separate system), there are a lot of emotional people who want to see themselves as feelers and a lot of detached, usually young, usually male type aficionados that want to see being unemotional as part of the thinking function.

Yet, this is exactly the very sort of conflation that Jung sought to avoid. He is quite explicit that when the feeling function is tied to sensing (meaning, mood and emotion with some sort of physiological component) that you're not dealing with a feeling type. In fact, he says "This characteristic amalgamation is found whenever feeling is still an undifferentiated function, and is most evident in the psyche of the neurotic with differentiated thinking." (PT 435, Hull and Baynes trans.)There are two important take-aways from this: if the person is truly emotional (affective response with physical reactions such as pounding heart, shaking hands, tears, loss of volume control and so forth)this is not differentiated feeling. Second, and this may seem obvious, but Jung thought that the thinking type could be neurotic.In other words, just because you're depressed or anxious doesn't mean you're a feeling type. That seems like it should go without saying, but you'd be surprised.

So what is feeling, exactly? Jung is clear on this point as well. On the next page he provides a definition for feelings. That is, the feeling function in action. This he simply describes as empathy. When well developed, these become empathetic values that provide a consistent and predictable framework for judgments and decisions.In other words, when trying to determine whether you are a feeling type, focus only on how concerned you are with others' emotions, not on how emotional you think you are. It doesn't matter if you spend every single lunch break locked in a bathroom stall crying, or if your mood changes twenty times throughout the course of the day. If the moment you interact with your co-workers, neighbors, friends and the guy that sells you cigarettes at the Quickie Mart, you find that their feelings take a backseat to issues such as analysis, getting things done, accuracy and so forth--you're a thinking type, not a feeling type. That's not to say that, as a thinking type, you don't have compassion. Thinking types can be quite compassionate, but usually they're less enmeshed.