inferior

chagall_hour_between_wolf_dog

16 Sep: Voice of the Feminine as Dream Symbol

Cassandra represents the difficulty of expressing one’s own truth in a way that is persuasive and influential in the world, particularly a truth that is not androcentric. The weakening of the voice of the dream ego represents the suppression and repression of the feminine that results from continuing to rely on old ways of exerting influence.

hodler_evening_silence

19 Mar: Vanishing Fingerprints

I suddenly noticed all the bright, beautiful one-inch tiles lining the pool. How had I not seen them before? Each of these little cobalt blue squares bore witness to my laps through the water. I decided, in the spirit of play, to imagine that every one of these tiny tiles represented $5000. For the time in which I swam, I engaged this unexpected image.

cobain_kurt

03 Jul: The “Forever 27” Tragedy

The environmental wounds to Cobain’s natural INFP disposition left his ego vulnerable to an anima invasion. It was she who allowed the instinctual power of the unconscious, in both its creative and destructive properties, to flow through the inferior function and overrun his personality, attempting to restore order by instigating archetypal modes of adaptation.

chagall_small_drawing_room

04 Oct: Embracing Si and Fi

The feeling function has its roots with the archetypal mother. My actual mother had limited tolerance for negative emotions from me. Her outbursts frightened me, and my own feelings terrified me even more. Hillman wrote that the mother-complex, “is the permanent trap of one’s reactions and values from earliest infancy, the box and walls in every situation whichever way one turns.”

leda_swan

06 Jul: Dancing with the Shadow in Black Swan

The black swan represents those aspects of the inferior function that evoke surprise, spontaneity, and freedom from control and rigidity. It is here where the interpretation of the black swan requires an open mind, not to play the role merely, but to embody what seems foreign and necessary to us from a more authentic and personal place.

heade_apple_blossoms

04 Jan: Resurrecting the Feeling Function

My Feeling is definitely not a matter of determining whether simply I like or dislike something, as Hillman suggested an undifferentiated Feeling function might do. For example, I feel a hundred different aspects of a rose—smell, vibration, gentleness, tone, harmony, et cetera, and all of these come into play when I evaluate its suitability for a certain spot in the garden.

satan_smites_job

04 Jan: Conversations with Satan

What is evil? We know it when we see it. Evil is subjective; it often depends on our point of view. For example, when the two women asked if they could tell me what I did wrong, I had a choice; I could either see their offer as helpful or “evil” in the sense that they were out to destroy my work. Can we utilize the power of psychological type to better understand what evil is?

guezala_revolving_door

07 Oct: Autism in Depth

The way an autistic individual perceives the world is of significant interest to researchers, for neurological differences have been found to impact the autistic individual’s perception and information-processing tremendously. Because Jung’s typology frames investigation of the psyche in terms of such mental processes, it can provide a new perspective on this very complex condition.

desolation

01 Apr: The Animus and Transformative Grief

Kowalsky’s self-sacrifice can be seen as the Animus acting as “the door through which all the figures of the unconscious come into consciousness.” His extraverted feeling is giving Stone a much-needed lesson: She must stop holding on to a situation that is no longer life-giving. It is time to let go of her debilitating prison of pain—and of her former self—so she can move forward.