<< Chapter < Page Chapter >> Page >

Take dogs and other animals for instance, there are only a few adjectives you can use to describe them such as nice, cute, and sweet. You wouldn't call a dog "devilish" or "representing the mother figure". There isn't a complex unconscious with many archetypes and significant descriptors that dogs have. This more complex level of interaction influences the other person, when you seek this depth of analysis, by looking at the significant descriptors of a person, the interaction is effected. If you didn't associate the person you were talking to with grander things, or make them appear to be a certain type of person with certain strong, noticeable qualities then there wouldn't be much happening in the interaction.

In this next paragraph Jung outlines what he thinks the relationship between intuition and sensation (in extraversion) is:

  • The primary function of intuition, however, is simply to transmit images, or perceptions of relations between things, which could not be transmitted by the other functions or only in a very roundabout way. These images have the value of specific insights which have a decisive influence on action whenever intuition is given priority. In this case, psychic adaptation will be grounded almost entirely on intuitions. Thinking, feeling, and sensation are then largely repressed, sensation being the one most affected, because, as the conscious sense function, it offers the greatest obstacle to intuition. Sensation is a hindrance to clear, unbiased, naive perception; its intrusive sensory stimuli direct attention to the physical surface, to the very things round and beyond which intuition tries to peer. But since extraverted intuition is directed predominantly to objects, it actually comes very close to sensation; indeed, the expectant attitude to external objects is just as likely to make use of sensation. Hence, if intuition is to function properly, sensation must to a large extent be suppressed. By sensation I mean in this instance the simple and immediate sense-impression understood as a clearly defined physiological and psychic datum. This must be expressly established beforehand because, if I ask an intuitive how he orients himself, he will speak of things that are almost indistinguishable from sense-impressions. Very often he will even use the word "sensation." He does have sensations, of course, but he is not guided by them as such; he uses them merely as starting-points for his perceptions. He selects them by unconscious predilection. It is not the strongest sensation, in the physiological sense, that is accorded the chief value, but any sensation whatsoever whose value is enhanced by the intuitive's unconscious attitude. In this way it may eventually come to acquire the chief value, and to his conscious mind it appears to be pure sensation. But actually it is not so.

So intuition "transmits images" which are "specific insights" that influences action. By image he means an understanding about something, so people reach intuitive insights about other people and these insights influence their behavior. "Thinking, feeling and sensation are then largely repressed", because these are obstacles to intuition. That means that this intuition comes from the unconscious mind, and thinking, feeling and sensation are conscious things which would tend to block out the unconscious. People can reach conscious conclusions about other people, feel and sense things about other people - when they do that it limits their intuition, their unconscious processing of the other people.

Get Jobilize Job Search Mobile App in your pocket Now!

Get it on Google Play Download on the App Store Now




Source:  OpenStax, Emotion, cognition, and social interaction - information from psychology and new ideas topics self help. OpenStax CNX. Jul 11, 2016 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col10403/1.71
Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google Inc.

Notification Switch

Would you like to follow the 'Emotion, cognition, and social interaction - information from psychology and new ideas topics self help' conversation and receive update notifications?

Ask