Returning to the Jungians, we find that at the forefront of Jungian psychological theory is the creation of a feminine ego based on the devalued functions of NF. Jungian analyst Laurie Schapira heralds the advent of a post-patriarchal "feminine" ego that is "grounded in the emotional [F], imaginal [N] matrix of the Self."⁷²

THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF N AND F

Hillman believes that the lack of development of the feeling function in contemporary society results in a situation in which "we have a rather impoverished and sentimental notion" of what an educated feeling function could be.⁷³ Zipes, in referring to the "instrumentalization of fantasy" explains how imagination [N] is devalued in contemporary society.⁷⁴ In addition to these assertions there is statistical data that demographically demonstrate that the NF combination is underrepresented in contemporary Western society.

According to Myers, of all those tested by the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (a tool that has been in use for over 40 years and tested on millions of people) reveals a number of surprising facts about type distribution and "preference" for certain organizational forms. The following chart modifies Myers' demographic chart of the population at-large by using my diagram displaying the four organizational forms and the four Quadrants. This chart associates a core psychological type with each of the four Quadrants. The statistics are also broken down into subgroupings of female and male.

From this diagram we can draw a number of conclusions. For men, the least preferred quadrant would be Quadrant four which is also true for patriarchal society. Out of the entire population, 68% prefer the familial or bureaucratic organizational form while only approximately 32% prefer the organic adaptive or matrix organizational form. The most common core type is SF and 47% of women are SF and prefer the familial organizational form. Almost three quarters (72%) of all women tested fall into Quadrant two (47%) and Quadrant three (24%), respectively. The majority of men (65%) also fall into Quadrant two (24%) and Quadrant three (41%). Therefore, for both sexes, ST and SF are at the top of their preference order while NT and NF are at the bottom. Generally, neither men nor women have a "preference" for the intuitive function.

Anyone interested in social transformation from the other Quadrants to Quadrant four and the organic adaptive organizational form will find the above statistical information quite depressing. In fact, the situation gets even worse when we examine the preferences of those who are the top managers of corporations where the bias toward the ST "core" type increases dramatically. The following chart represents the "core" types for CEOs.⁷⁵

From these demographics we discover a number of noteworthy observations. For one, the number of STs as CEOs doubled as compared to the number of STs found in the general population. Secondly, among CEOs, the frequency of SFs is dramatically reduced in number by at least 16 fold. On the other hand, there is a sharp increase in the number of NTs as CEOs resulting in the Matrix (or Research & Development) organizational form

becoming the second most preferred organizational form. The frequency of NFs is reduced from an already low of 17% in the general population to 1% among CEOs. Lastly, while more than half of the general population prefers either Quadrants two or four, only 3.6% of all CEOs prefer these same two Quadrants.

To summarize the statistics point to the fact that the general population and a large portion of CEOs prefer ST and therefore are situated in Quadrant three. To be realistic, any strategies to transform society from Quadrant three into Quadrant four will require using indirect means. It is highly unlikely that societal transformation toward Quadrant four would occur according to figures one and two (see below) because both methods requires a radical reversal of the culturally "accepted" values and beliefs to that of its shadow (from ST to NF or SF to NT).

However, if a successful shift is to take place, figures three and four reflect the most likely paths of change from Quadrant three to that of Quadrant four. Based on the preference order for men who are CEOs and at the top of the patriarchal society, that path would occur from ST to NT to NF. For women, statistically, the path would mean going from ST towards the SF and then NF.

The Developmental Levels for F and N

The above two potential paths of change for moving into Quadrant four call for the development of the underrepresented and undervalued functions. The strategy for figure three which is the shift from ST to SF involves the development of the feeling function while the strategy for figure four which is the shift from ST to NT centers around the development of the intuitive function. The final step for both would be to develop the remaining core function: 1) from the NT to NF -- the feeling function and 2) from the SF to NF -- the intuitive function.

To more fully examine this process, a model is needed that would focus on the education of each function according to a developmental gradient. Fudjack and Dinkelaker, through extensive research into existing theories of emotion and

intuition/creativity, have discerned five developmental stages between the inferior and superior uses of both feeling and intuition.⁷⁶ Though it has been suggested by contemporary Jungian Marie-Louise Von Franz that each function can be developed, there has been very little discussion of this within the more popularly known works on psychological typology of Myers, Briggs and others. This absence can lead one to believe that each function has but one static description. It is hoped, Fudjack and Dinkelaker state, that there will be "...a greater understanding of each personality type and the extent to which members of differing types rely on VARYING degrees of development of, and appreciation for, each function."⁷⁷ Furthermore, they also conclude that such a developmental theory will counteract the prevailing tendency to conflate levels of development, thereby underestimate that function and its usefulness.

...[there is presently] a tendency to compare apples and oranges: higher levels of development of the thinking function with lower levels of development of the feeling function, and higher levels of development of sensing with lower levels of development of intuition - to the detriment (and continued undervaluation) of the currently undervalued minority types. For example, a capacity for critical reason (level three 'thinking') is often pitted in our society against EMOTIONALITY (level one 'feeling'). The deck is stacked, and a false conclusion is drawn - that 'thinking'is more valuable a function than 'feeling'.⁷⁸

In order to more fully understand the developmental levels of both feeling and intuition, a description of the levels is needed.

The Five Levels of the Feeling Function

First we will concern ourselves with the feeling function. The feeling function at level one is in its most undeveloped state. Feelings are characteristically neither recognized nor owned as feelings. When feelings do erupt to the surface, they are experienced as intense and overwhelming. These feelings threaten the ego's sense of control and are therefore considered dangerous. The expression of feelings is very exaggerated and comes out in "broad sweeping strokes" as sentimentality and emotionality. At this level a picture, song, or word can trigger an explosion of tears that is uncontrollable for the person experiencing this. Feelings are a disruption in the ability to think, reason, act, and work. Because of the fear associated with being overwhelmed or clouded by emotions, feelings are more than likely repressed and blocked.

At level two, there begins to be a degree of sophistication in the feeling function and it is used for differentiating and identifying a number of emotions (happy, sad, depressed, anxious). Specific feelings are differentiated from one another and one learns to expand the depth and range of these emotions. These emotions are experienced as intermittent and primarily "triggered" by outside objects. Feelings appear to come and go like clouds passing in the sky. Unlike level one where there is a repression of feeling, level

two acknowledges a certain level of subjectivity where one recognizes that one is having and experiencing different emotions.

At level three, the feeling function centers around the awareness of feeling as a continually interactive feedback process. Whereas in level two, feelings are like clouds in the sky, intermittent and distant, level three is the sky itself, ever-present and expansive. An individual at level three operates out of this complex and ever-present feeling state. Fudjack and Dinkelaker state, "it is recognized that our perceptions are infused with feeling, and that the objects of our attention ALL have feeling tones which orient us in respect to these objects... Feeling is the mode through which we experience our situation as tacit context."⁷⁹ Through this awareness it is possible to develop the ability to be attentive and attuned, in a rather sophisticated manner, to the ever-shifting contexts that one may be in. Arnold Mindell, a process psychologist, identifies these ever-shifting contexts as fields stating:

Fields are natural phenomena that include everyone, are omnipresent, and exert forces upon things in their midst.... We think we manage or organize our lives and groups, but actually fields create and organize us as much as we organize them. ...Fields have neither an inside nor an outside but permeate everything, like electromagnetic vibrations, or an atmosphere that has no well-defined limits. ...Everyone touched by a given field is a part of it.⁸⁰

Feeling is constantly present as a feedback system for the individual to create "order" and "perspective", to direct attention, and to relate the "part" to the "whole" as an integrative function.

The feeling function at level four goes beyond the immediate and personal feeling field associated with level three to that of a social or communal perspective where the focus is on the experience of intersubjectivity, interpersonal relationships, and the recognition of "overlapping fields". Furthermore, Mindell states, "fields organize member's identity" thereby indicating the interconnectivity and interdependence of everything. According to Stolorow, Atwood, and Brandchaft, in their book The Intersubjective Perspective, "affectivity (feeling) we now know is not a product of isolated intra-psychic mechanism", it is a product of the intersubjective field -- to be specific, a product of "the child-caregiver system of mutual regulation."⁸¹ While the individual's identity, as Storrow states, is the product of "shifting boundar[ies] forming within an intersubjective field", it is through feeling at level four that we access and experience the interrelationships that are continually forming and re-forming. In other words, if we think of "bracketing" as the singling out of a individual part from the contextual whole, then we can think of the human individual as "constructed" by the act of bracketing a portion out from the social field. The individual stands in relationship to the field as figure does to ground. It is at this level that individuals "learn to synchronize [their] underlying feeling

states with those of other persons, and in so doing to 'identify' with them (in a direct, experiential manner that obviates the need for 'cognitive' analysis)."⁸² The active interpenetration of individual feeling fields is done so through empathy (by "feeling with" or "feeling into"). "Empathy", state Fudjack and Dinkelaker, "is grounded in the capacity of individuals, in relationship, to unconsciously entrain (or synchronize) feeling."⁸³ The feeling function becomes the medium for communicating and accessing the "shared" social field where the active interchange of feelings (either consciously or unconsciously) occurs in the form of resonance, confluence of process, communion, and empathy between individuals and groups. This contributes to the formation of a common ground that is rooted in valuing all as intrinsically worthy, as expressed in an uncontrived and immediate feeling of com-passion (feeling together) and love for others. There is a dawning capacity of individuals to desire and create facilitative environments via "active" feeling.

Level five addresses the most profound level of interconnectedness and interdependence of all things. Though the direct experience of this level tends to be defined as mystical, there is nothing unnatural about it because the experience is accessible through developing and educating the feeling function. This dawning realization was succinctly described by Thich Nhat Hann, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, as "Inter-Being". A metaphor that often arises to express this experience is "Indra's Net". The image is that of a web that contains countless jewels. Though they are separate from each other, each jewel contains the image of all the others, very much like a holographic image.

In describing the higher reaches (levels), the feeling function is invoked by concepts that are not usually associated with feeling at the lower levels, e.g.. empathy, interpersonal fields, subjectivity, reciprocity, interpenetration; and hinted at by phrases: confluence of process, feeling into, feeling with, facilitative environments. Jung's concept of feeling does introduce the notion of value ("ethics" and morality), relationships, and reciprocity that are connected to the different developmental levels of 2, 3, and 4 respectively.

There are a number of terms and concepts from the political domain that also refer to the higher levels of the feeling function such as Kropotkin's notion of "mutual aid" (level 4), "sociability" (level 4), and "solidarity" (level 4). In addition, Gustav Landauer's use of the word "community" (level 4) and David Weick's descriptions of "intersubjectivity" and "love" (both at level 4) also point to an advanced feeling function. Last but not least, is the socio-political term "interdependence". The experience of the higher levels of the feeling function via empathy, intersubjectivity, and the highest realization of "Inter-Being" are inextricably interconnected with the term interdependence.

The Five Levels of Intuition

The intuition function at level one, like the feeling function, is in its most undeveloped state. Because intuitions are not recognized or owned at this level, it is usually expressed in the form of a "suspicion" or as a premonition of a future danger. Wild and "irrational" images that come through dreams will be felt to be a foreshadowing,

usually of a sickness or a foreboding circumstance. At this level, intuition is usually associated with the occult, witchery, or black magic -- all of which are to be avoided or crushed and repressed.

At level two, intuitions are found to have meaning. What were originally hunches and suspicions to be avoided and feared are now seen at this level to have a functional purpose for providing new insights, innovation, and problem solving. Dreams and fantastic thoughts are found to have latent meanings. The intuitive function at this level accesses the imagination (fantasy) in an unpredictable and sometimes unreliable fashion. Though there is an honoring and recognition of these momentary glimpses as possibly positive there is no attempt to further develop or educate the intuitive function beyond this point. Rather, the intuitive function is only recognized as sometimes offering advance warning or guidance where knowledge can be gleaned from dreams, visions, or other extemporaneous intuitive occurrences. Importance is placed on the object, of having an intuition or hunch, not on the process of encouraging and developing the function itself.

At the third level, intuition is seen as linked to the creative process; there is an attempt to harness the intuitive function. Techniques are devised to do this, such as the brainstorming method, which is used to creatively play with images and ideas and which results in freely associating the material in new and innovative ways. Errors, anomalies, and mistakes are part of the creative process and are likely to be recognized as potentially leading to new ideas or solutions. According to Fudjack and Dinkelaker, "the role of the unconscious (or its equivalent) is honored -- and processes which encourage altered forms of awareness or incubation are invoked on occasion."⁸⁴ Willis Harman and Howard Rheingold, in their book Higher Creativity: Liberating the Unconscious for Breakthrough Insights, state that at a certain stage in the creative process there comes a time when all the preparatory work is done and that the information and ideas have to be left alone in order for the subconscious to work on the problem. A method for reaching this state is through alert relaxation:

...alert relaxation, is designed to induce what has been called in medical science the relaxation response. This facilitates the "incubation mode" -- through taking the mind "off-line" and quieting down surface thoughts that might disturb the workings of the deep unconscious...⁸⁵

contemporary psychologist, in her book Awakening Intuition, describes the association between intuition and enhanced creativity:

Intuition can open up new possibilities, sometimes by allowing you to see alternatives you have overlooked, sometimes by offering a fresh, creative solution to a situation in which you feel stuck. Being a nonlinear mode of knowing, intuition can frequently point the way out of a double bind. Giving yourself space to playfully consider alternatives as real options which could become available, despite rational objections... Letting all the possible and impossible alternatives into one's awareness can stimulate the creative process.⁸⁷

At the next level, that of level four, the intuitive function is recognized as the capacity to shift paradigms which is a more advanced state of creativity, according to Fudjack and Dinkelaker. Whereas level three is about the creative process of symbol generation and myth-making, level four is about the capacity to create "whole" new realities through envisioning utopian possibilities. The intuitive function heightens sensitivity toward and the appreciation for the paradigm specific nature of truth, language, facts, and theories. In addition, intuition involves the letting go of a frame through deconstruction of the unquestioned assumptions and fundamental structures of that paradigm. To assist in this process, the intuitive function acts as an anomaly detector. Every frame, context, theory, or paradigm is going to have these anomalies and the intuitive function will act as an attunement mechanism for locating them. When paradigms shift (many times in response to the uncovered anomalies) everything within the paradigm shifts in meaning accordingly. Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science who introduced the concept of "paradigm shifting", in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, states "...within the new paradigm, old terms, concepts, and experiments fall into new relationships one with the other."⁸⁸ Intuition is the faculty by which the old "whole" is perceived and through which new "wholes" are apprehended in a "flash".

At the fifth level, the intuitive function involves the appreciation of the world as a symbolic creation that is ultimately self-transcending and connected with the "ground" of pure unmanifest potential (possibility). The individual is capable of continually stepping out of their own paradigm and into new frames. Intuition is the faculty which allows the individual to constantly create their own frame of reference and to make the rules by which they live, thus becoming their own source of meaning. It is here that we can find

the deepest and most thorough "deconstruction" of habitual patterns and perceptions. This process of radically dismantling the prevailing frame prepares the ground for the reconstruction of a new one. Therefore, any and all forms and ideas are transcended by the intuitive function allowing for the experience of undifferentiated awareness and "pure" consciousness out of which form arises.

What may be surprising about the intuitive function is that the concepts and phrases used to invoke that faculty are well beyond the simplistic definition of intuition as hunch or suspicion. The word intuition originally comes from the religious sphere where it was used to describe the direct experience of God. Today, more often that words like imagination, creativity, and inspiration are used to refer to the intuitive faculty and the diffuse states of awareness by which the "whole" is apprehended.

Philip Goldberg, in his book The Intuitive Edge, lists a number of qualities that he found to be associated with intuitive / creative people including a strong resistance to outside control and direction. "The portraits describe a constellation of features: self-assured, highly motivated nonconformists who can tolerate ambiguity, change, and uncertainty and are willing to risk looking foolish or being wrong."⁸⁹ Stephen Nachmanovitch, in his book Free Play: The Power of Improvisation in Life and the Arts, echoes Goldberg's assessment stating that creative individuals are willing to take the risk of "falling down" in playing and improvisation. Furthermore, Nachmanovitch states:

As play, the act is its own destination. The focus is on process, not product. Play is intrinsically satisfying. It is not conditioned on anything else. Play, creativity, art, spontaneity, all these experiences are their own rewards and are blocked when we perform for reward or punishment, profit or loss.⁹⁰

The art of play and improvisation for the creative person involves the development of an inner awareness --intuition. Through the development of one's own unique voice there is no need to follow external guides or norms. "There is no need to alter your voice in order to please others, and no need to alter it to differentiate yourself from others. Quality arises from, and is recognized by, resonance with inner truth."⁹¹ As Nachmanovitch believes, the creative process is in its most profound view a spiritual path that involves the development of the self to the point where its expression is full and original to itself. From the sociopolitical angle the development of one's voice through having the capacity to operate without imposed rules and break patterns and frames as necessary are inextricably linked to autonomy -- the capacity to self-legistate and be self-determined.

Strong NF Combination Linked With Quadrant Four

More important than viewing the feeling and intuitive functions separately, is understanding that the combination of these two undervalued functions demonstrates the uniqueness of Quadrant four as an antidote for the overdeveloped rational-empirical (ST) world-view. Jane Piirto, in her book Understanding Those Who Create, states:

Creative people, artists at least, characteristically have strong emotional sensitivity and intensity, a great range of feeling [F], as well as having high imaginational [N] overexcitability, which is "spontaneous activity of the mind that freely makes unexpected associations, reaches into invented realms, takes any form as a stimulus to perceive other forms, including nonverbal ones.⁹²

In addition, one might assume that those who have undeveloped or under used intuitive and feeling functions would be more susceptible to authoritarian tendencies. Theodore Adorno et. al., in their massive study on the subject of authoritarian personality types, found that those who tested high on the authoritarian scale (f-scale) were in "opposition to the subjective [F], the imaginative [N], the tender-minded", and "...subjects show predominantly what may be called hierarchical conception of human relationships".⁹⁴ Furthermore, authoritarian types tended to have a "constriction of fantasy [N]" which, Adorno states, "...is probably related to the... emphasis on 'sticking to the facts' [S], to their extraceptiveness, and to their rejection of 'imagination' [N] and 'emotion' [F]."⁹⁵ Adorno continues, stating: "according to the frame of mind [of the authoritarian] which is being analyzed here, there is no utopia and , one may add, there should be no utopia. One has to be 'realistic'."⁹⁶

If we were to conceive of the feeling and intuitive functions as acting in tandem with each other we might, as Victor Turner an anthropologist does, speak of a sociosymbolic field. It is this field that Turner contrasts with hierarchical structure:

In anthropology there has been a noticeable shift in theoretical emphasis in recent years from structure to process, from competence to performance, from the logics of cultural and social systems to the dialectics of socio-cultural processes. This has not meant the jettisoning of structuralist discoveries but rather a reintegration of the insights gained from the study of symbol systems such as myth, ritual, and kinship terminology treated as abstract sets of interdependent binary oppositions and

-page 67-

mediations into the mainline study of "man and woman alive," the ongoing developing and declining processes of interpersonal and intergroup behavior in communities and networks, and the cultural processes and products involved with these. We are to think of changing sociosymbolic fields rather than static structures.⁹⁷

[table of contents]  [previous]  [next]