Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Personality, Pathology and the Inferior Function



A recent altercation got me thinking a lot about personality type and how our own individual lens can often judge the opposite type as pathological. A bit of background:

I've been working on a new novel. As the novel deals with personality disorders, I've been re-familiarizing myself with both Borderline and Schizotypal personality disorders. About a week ago, I made a tongue-in-cheek joke on Facebook on how easy it was to self-diagnose. A former colleague of mine jumped in and said that his ex was BPD, and he had diagnosed her when he learned about the disorder in his psychology class. I had thought this, based on the information provided, was a bit hasty, and advised against jumping to such a conclusion, then recommended some reading material. He immediately became snarky. My initial reaction was to respond in kind but, recognizing that this was probably a sensitive issue for him, acknowledged the difficulty of what he had experienced then provided him with a link to an article on the feminist critique of Borderline Personality Disorder. I suggested that he might want to familiarize himself with some of the issues around the diagnosis. He reacted by accusing me of putting him in a box--in this case, labeling him as a sexist--and made sarcastic Mitt Romney references. (I had never even implied that he was sexist, nor had the idea even occurred to me prior to that, I just thought that the feminist critique made some good points about the effects of childhood trauma and how stigmatized self injurious women often were in the mental health community.)

After it all blew over, something continued to nag at me, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I thought I'd been diplomatic and matter of fact, but I realized, it was bugging me because I had put him in a box in my own mind--not for his politics, but for his personality type. Well, sort of. I mean, I knew he was an ENTJ, but more than that, I had always known him to be someone that was very logical and analytical, and who could happily "geek out" for long stretches of time, but who had never shown much interest in interpersonal connecting. I concluded that, like many academic philosophers, he just wasn't all that comfortable dealing with others' emotions. Knowing he was an ENTJ may have played into it to an extent, but more than that, seeming like such a strong ENTJ played into my assessment. I figured that the ex was probably a strong feeling type and that it was simply a type conflict. (Though I did genuinely believe he had inadequate information to make such an assessment, especially in light of the potentially self-serving side benefit inherent in categorizing someone you have a bad history with as disordered.)

Still, I'm not sure that I was totally off-base about this being an issue of type conflict rather than pathology. To be sure, the ex appeared to have a lot of anxiety and maybe even PTSD, but it wasn't clear that she was Borderline (at least not by the DSM IV criteria). What was clear was that he thought she was completely insane and she was suspicious, and later afraid, of him. However, this is exactly what happens when two people with well (if not over) developed but opposing functions get into a conflict with the other, especially when already in an intense relationship. Each person thinks that the other person is, in some way, crazy or out of control. The thinking type perceives the feeling type as unpredictable and needy whereas the feeling type perceives the thinking type as cold and aggressive. Of course neither of these things are true, they're simply projections of the inferior function. In short, each person is projecting their own more primitive manifestations of the inferior function onto the person whose function is dominant. In reality, it's the thinking type that, when really in a bad way, becomes temporarily unpredictable and needy. It's the feeling type that, when extremely stressed, can be rather cold and even aggressive.

That, I think, is why personality theory provides something that mainstream psychology is too quick to dismiss: the recognition that, rather than some personalities being "normal" and others disordered, that we all are basically on an even playing field. Whether you're an ISFP or ENTJ, we all basically have our baggage. In the case of Jung's theory, our baggage is precisely that we deny that the opposite type is our baggage. If you're a thinking type, your inability to come to terms with your feeling side is your baggage, and it will continue to not only haunt you, but undermine your ability to effectively interact with your opposite type, until you start to integrate it. If you're a feeling type, the opposite is true. Sensing and intuitive types are similarly afflicted. There's no line separating normal from ill, nor is there any determining whose perspective is more valid based on how one fares in a category. At least, not if personality type is used correctly, and in the spirit Jung intended.

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