Maybe he just reads too much! My younger brother Nicholas, that is. Once again he was reading one of dad’s books and now he can’t stop talking about what it takes for any of us to become a fully functioning person. Nicholas suggests that this then brings us to an obvious question, which is “What psychological functions would we need to recognize, accept, develop, and balance?” He suggests that there are four psychological functions that each of us uses in order to survive. I will do my best to explain what he says.
The first function is sensing. My five basic senses- sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch- allow me to make contact with the physical world. These five senses, as we all learn in grade school, tell me that a thing is, that something exists. I can hear my voice, other peoples voices, bells ringing, cars coming, wind blowing, my stomach grumbling, people walking by, etc. I can see holes in the ground, the depth of stairways, people’s facial expressions, the sun and moon, rain clouds coming, sidewalks and curbs, stoves and refrigerators. You get the idea. With my sense of touch I can experience hot and cold, the wind on my face, the weight of my body as I sit down, cuts and bruises, a loving gesture from another. I can also get information from my senses of smell and taste. All together my psychological function of sensing helps me to ground myself in my physical world, and helps me “make sense” of my physical existence.
The second function is thinking. Thinking tells me what a thing is. It’s how I put names on objects like chair, car, mom, apple, tooth, and air. It’s how I interpret and put meaning on objects like my chair, my family, my country, right and wrong. The function of thinking allows me to live in my cognitive or mental world where I live in the land of beliefs, conclusions, assumptions, ideas, opinions, judgements, expectations, stereotypes, and reasons. Each of these types of interpretation have one thing in common, they all consist of mental images. Together they create all of the different kinds of meanings that I make in my head in order to help me understand myself, other people, and situations. Whereas sensing allows me to acknowledge that something exists in the physical world, thinking allows me to put meaning on that object/item/experience and then to psychologically organize it for further use. It’s like grounding myself psychologically.
The third function is feeling, where I become aware of my emotional response to a situation. I can feel sad or mad or glad or scared or loved or powerful or tired or anxious or depressed or ecstatic. I can feel so many things and I can experience more than one feeling at any time. Feeling helps me to focus on the value of things. It tells me what a thing is worth to me, whether it is acceptable, damaging, or unimportant. On account of that, I cannot sense or think without having a certain feeling reaction.
The beauty of these three psychological functions is that they help me to know that something is, to then put meaning on it, and also to know if the thing is dangerous or beneficial. How lucky I am that these three functions are all part of my natural make-up and all work together.
The fourth function is intuition, which is the most difficult to describe by far. Unfortunately, in most languages there does not even exist a word for this function. Intuition is awareness that goes via our unconscious. It is an immediate awareness of a situation or a relationship that doesn’t have to go through our conscious mind. It is the combined wisdom of our bodies on a cellular level and our memory on a mental level via a “hunch” that “just feels right.” Intuition favors my total awareness over my limited conscious perception. It is hard to explain and we all know moments of just knowing something that we shouldn’t really know and don’t know how we know this. Is it magical?, spiritual?, energetic?, karmic? Nicholas isn’t sure.
Nicholas has a lot more to say regarding our four psychological functions. I won’t go on much further, though. He does insist that we need to incorporate and balance all four in order to become a fully functioning person. Which functions do you use the most and thus feel most comfortable with? Which functions do you use the least and thus feel less comfortable with (and consequently need to use more so that you are balanced?) Check in with yourself and see! Wouldn’t it be great if more of us tried to become more fully functioning and psychologically balanced? Nicholas has made this a life goal of his. Might it become one of your life goals?
As always,
Gita
( This blog based on the work of Carl Jung and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. Dr. Klein uses Gita as an alias. If you like this blog try his others.)
Alias “Gita”, Dr. Neal Klein is an esteemed author, professor, dance professional, and co-founder of the Possibility Detectives.