Everyone knows that an introvert is someone who is inward-looking, who speaks to his buttons, while an extrovert is outward-looking and needs others like he needs the air he breathes.
The first to coin these terms was the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, Freud’s dissenting disciple. Let us take a look at how he differs not only from Freud but also from another great contemporary, Adler, and then we will focus on these traditional attitudes or tendencies towards life and others.
Freud, Adler and Jung
Sigmund Freud – He is the great master and founder of modern psychology, understood in his time as psychoanalysis. Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung are his followers and disciples who, at first, fundamentally follow the theory of their master, but later diverge considerably, each taking on a different course.
Freud understands that the root of all psychological problems is sexual, that is, the repression of sexual desires in the unconscious leads to neurotic behaviour in the conscious. Freud is the first thinker to take the subject of sex out of the dark, away from the scope of sin. To speak about sex in his time was a taboo, and perhaps this somehow led him to give so much importance to it.
The division of human personality into three instances is his great contribution to understanding human nature. The Id is the first instance and the one that brings us closest to the last primate we evolved from, we are born with the Id and we never lose it. The Id is unconscious and thus remains within us; furthermore, the Id relates symbiotically to its surroundings, not detaching itself too much from it.
As the child grows and relates to his environment, he begins to stand out and to differentiate himself from it, eventually reaching self-awareness: this is how the self, the Ego, is born. Later, the child conscious of his being also becomes aware, through education of how he should be, and that he can grow and be better, and so the Superego is born, the last instance of personality according to Freud.
Alfred Adler – Less introspective than Freud, he was more interested in the relationships that the child establishes since the beginning and how he sees himself before others. Contrary to Freud, he understands that the reason for all psychological problems is the inferiority complex that makes a person thirst for power.
In analyzing the unconscious, Freud discovers erotic fantasies and repressed desires; Adler, on the other hand, thinks that this unconscious contains feelings of inferiority and desires for power and greatness that will turn the person aggressive in the struggle for power, or apathetic if he understands that he cannot attain this power.
In their psychotherapeutic approach, the two are also different. Adler does not use the couch because he sees that it replicates a parent-child relationship which reinforces the client’s inferiority complex. Instead, he uses two chairs facing each other thus making the client and the therapist equal participants in the psychotherapeutic process. Perhaps this is the precursor to Carl Rogers’ non-directive therapy.
Carl Gustav Jung – He extends the Freudian unconscious beyond the boundaries of the individual, creating the collective unconscious, which is similar to a database to which everyone naturally connects because it contains all the archetypes of humanity.
One of the reasons for the divergence among these three great psychologists may be that each tends to lean towards a different stage of growth, despite the fact that their theories were intended to be applied to man at all stages of growth. Freud is more interested in childhood, Adler in adolescence and Jung in adulthood.
In this sense, Jung abandons Freud because he understands that our behaviour is not dependent only on past events, whether these were traumatic or not. A person seeks always to live in the present moment, and is oriented towards the future and, in this sense, takes on the attitude he thinks will best solve his problems and satisfy his needs.
In this context, Jung proposes two attitudes, tendencies or approaches towards life: introversion and extroversion. These ideas are considered to be Jung’s greatest contribution to personality theory. In fact, Jung’s theory of the introvert and extrovert types serves as the basis for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
Without fretting over the past, the Myers-Briggs duo, studies the person’s behaviour in the here and now, and analyzes it as to what extent it lies between the two opposing attitudes or tendencies.
- Concerning our motivation and the way we acquire energy, we are either introvert or extrovert.
- Concerning how we acquire and process information we need in our lives, we are either sensitive or intuitive.
- Concerning how we make decisions, some are more regulated by thought and others by feeling.
- Concerning how we situate ourselves in life at the existential and professional level, some rely more on their ability to judge, others more on their perception.
The aim of this article is not to study the Myers-Briggs theory but rather the introvert and extrovert behaviours according to Jung and other authors that came after him. The title of this article not only refers to introversion and extroversion, but also ambiversion.
Admittedly this term was unknown to Jung but from his observation he already noted that there was no one who was 100% introvert or 100% extrovert. Today the authors understand that there are people who are neither one nor the other, nor the two at the same time, depending on the situations or motivations at that moment.
What does it mean to be an introvert – an extrovert – an ambivert? Is it an attitude towards reality, towards others, towards life? Or is it a drive, a tendency, a psychological type, a character, a personality type, a temperament?
I had difficulty in deciding on the title of this article because each author uses his own way of understanding these fundamental behaviours of the human person. We keep the word “attitude”, and if we had to choose a second one we would choose “tendency”, to define the way a person situates himself in life in relation to himself, to reality and to others.
What is the natural orientation of our energy? What drives us the most? Each person has two faces. One is directed towards the outside world of activities, enthusiasm, people and things, and the other towards the inner world of thoughts, interests, ideas and imagination.
Since these two sides of our nature are complementary, most people have a preference to one over the other. Therefore, one of their two faces – extrovert or introvert – takes the lead in the development of their personality and plays a more dominant role in their behaviour.
Lately there has been talk of a third tendency – ambiversion – that is basically a synthesis of the other two. Personally, I have always understood myself as an introvert; but all the tests that I have done on the subject have put me on the borderline between an introvert and an extrovert, that is, an introvert with facets of extroversion.
Discovering the term ambiversion was for me the Eureka moment, like discovering myself. After all, I am not as introverted as I thought nor am I an extrovert, but rather a synthesis or mixture of these two attitudes. I couldn’t be any other way, being who I am and, in my work, dealing directly with people more than with things or paperwork.
Childhood: introversion and extroversion
Jung understands that we acquired these two fundamental attitudes towards life, reality and others which we then maintain for the rest of our lives. These attitudes appear when the baby cuts the umbilical cord that connects him to his environment and starts to differentiate himself from it. We can say that the introvert is born or is emancipated before the extrovert, to the extent that he differentiates himself more strongly from his environment than the extrovert who, in some way, still remains for a longer time in symbiosis with it.
Faced with this fact, a child with an extrovert tendency shows a readiness to act and respond to the stimuli and requests from the surroundings; his attention is directed to the outside world and he interacts with objects without reservations and without fear, even if they are foreign to him.
An introverted child, on the other hand, takes on a reflective and even suspicious attitude towards what he does not know, he feels scared and understands that he must protect and defend himself against the influence that objects may have on him. Therefore, he keeps a distance from them in order to get to know them better and to acquire power and self-confidence in his actions over them.
Little is known about the way we become introverts or extroverts. Initially much importance was attached to educational factors, but it is often the case that children of the same mother who were theoretically educated in the same way are found to act and react in different ways under the same situation.
In the case of psychological attitudes, the educational factor is apparently not the most important determinant in acquiring introversion or extroversion attitude. It is likely that there is a genetic or biological predisposition in assuming one or the other attitude.
The introvert attitude
The introvert’s way of knowing – The world of the introvert is within himself; it is similar to the world of ideas of Plato’s Cave. At the philosophical level, at the act of knowing things, the introvert does not deal with their existence or accidents, that is, their characteristics, but with their essence, with what these things mean in themselves or for him.
Of course, this basic attitude can lead to misunderstandings from the fact that the introvert does not relate to the object itself, but to the subjective idea or image he has of the object, thing or person under his consideration. The introvert's perception of the reality is never objective because he does not see things as they are, but how he understands that they are, that is, as they are to him.
For the introvert, the psychic reality is a relatively concrete experience, sometimes even more concrete than the external reality. What counts is not what the thing or person is in itself but how the subject knows it. The mistake is of course in confusing what the thing or person really is with what it is to me. The subject who is knowing is more important than the person or thing to be known. People and things are not what they are in themselves, but what they are to me.
They say or used to say that the Japanese do not enjoy in the here and now the places they visit because they are too busy taking pictures and videos, which they eventually enjoy in the comfort of their homes as they revisit them through the videos and photos that they replay on the TV screen, drinking sake. This can be a caricature image of an introvert who disregards the external reality in favour of the internal one.
The mind of the extrovert is guided by and reports faithfully to the objective facts; it remains always in contact with the reality to be known, and its conception may vary as this varies. The mind of the introvert, on the other hand, is like a camera: the shutter opens for a short span of time, reality enters, and then it closes and does not open again. While the introvert may look at the extrovert as superficial and too dependent on reality, the extrovert looks at the introvert as prejudiced, selfish and distant from reality.
Introversion and shyness – Introverts may or may not be shy; the timid ones are insecure, apprehensive and nervous when they are with people; the introverts may even have good social skills, but they get tired of being with others and need to be alone to recharge their energy.
In summary
- He is inward-looking and has a preference to finding energy and drive in the world of ideas, emotions, impressions and personal experiences. He prefers to reflect before acting and then reflect again. He needs time to think and recover his energy. In general, he is not very sociable by choice and it is not because of shyness. Very hectic surroundings, with lots of people, tire the introvert.
- From an energy point of view, the introvert produces his own energy, he is self-motivated, autonomous and independent.
- The introvert’s way of learning is by observation, he is a more thoughtful and introspective person. The introvert needs to be alone. He doesn’t express much, but thinks and analyzes much.
- He thinks and reflects and only then acts, he hardly changes his mind, so he may be fundamentalist and intolerant when he is negative.
- He needs a lot of time for himself to recharge his batteries; the extrovert needs to connect to the outside world to motivate himself, to connect to others to have his batteries charged.
- Motivated from within, his mind is sometimes so active that he tends to shut out the outside world in order to protect himself. His mind is his castle.
- He has a preference for communicating and relating one-on-one. The conversation topics are profound and revolve around ideas and concepts; he does not waste time on trivial topics or gossips.
- He prefers to direct his energy studying and analyzing ideas, information, explanations and beliefs.
- Paraphrasing Descartes, the introvert thinks and therefore he is, and then may or may not act; the extrovert is and therefore he thinks.
- The introvert is Plato, the extrovert is Aristotle.
- The extrovert is easy to get to know, the introvert is difficult to get to know.
- The extrovert expresses emotions, the introvert controls or suppresses them. The former needs relationships, the latter needs solitude and privacy. One brings breadth to life, the other brings depth. The extrovert may be accused of being superficial, the introvert of being an island.
- Introverts make up a small part of the population.
Introverts are good researchers, engineers, architects, philosophers, writers, psychologists, teachers, or areas where the ability to reflect before acting is valued. For example, a soldier can and should be extroverted, while a military strategist should certainly be introverted; but this doesn’t always happen. When it comes to human nature, more are the exceptions than the rules.
The extrovert attitude
The world of the extrovert is the real world, outside of himself. For the extrovert, the outside world seems to be the subject while he being the object. The individual is impregnated by the exterior which invades him. According to Jung, the extrovert lives in such a way that the object, as the determinant factor, plays a much greater role in his consciousness than his own subjective opinion. He feels and thinks about the object, person or thing, of his knowledge, losing in this his subjectivity or individuality.
An extrovert may or may not be a friendly and sociable person. What really defines him is his need of others and the outside world in order to be himself; he feels full of energy when he is with others, because he draws his energy, his drives and ideas from them.
The extrovert’s subjective considerations exist but they are not privileged at the level of his consciousness, because he favors the object and its circumstances instead of highlighting himself as the subject. This can lead the extrovert to distance himself in the sphere of thoughts, evaluations, sensations and subjective intuitions. With this picture of the psyche, it is much more likely for an extrovert to alienate himself and lose his freedom in an addictive behaviour than for an introvert who maintains a safe distance in relations to things.
The extrovert tends to live dissociated and divorced from himself, and from his feelings and thoughts. He takes refuge in objects to ward off pain and suffering, and realizes his needs when the unmet needs have already become problematic. The subjective needs, in fact, are his weak point, ignoring the health of his own body through unhealthy behaviours. The conscious non-recognition of his needs may take on catastrophic proportions to the point of losing the reference and magnitude of things in relation to himself: he is so absorbed in the reality that he gets confused with it.
In summary
- He needs to be with others and to be in touch with them to recharge his energy externally. He is driven or draws his energy from the world of things, people, relationships, and activities. The way of learning is also external: he needs conversation, the exchange of ideas. He hates to do things on his own, without interacting with others and the world around him. He feels that he lacks something when deprived of interaction with the outside world, because this is what drives him. He looks for inspiration by thinking out loud and in dialoguing with others. He works better in a team than alone.
- He gets his energy from action; his psychic energy, attention and interest are directed outwards, towards people and the world around him. It is the world around him that is real and it is this and not his thought that determines his behaviour. His interior world is less real and more secondary on his list of priorities and has less influence on his behaviour. He is more interested in what happens around him than what is happening inside of himself.
- He likes to do various activities; he acts first and thinks later. When inactive, his energy diminishes, may even enter into boredom and depression. In general, he is sociable. While the introvert seeks to adapt the world to his mind, the extrovert adapts, accommodates himself to the world. In this sense, he easily changes his mind, like a reed stirred by the wind, or like a chameleon, and when he is negative, he is a person without principles. He makes new friends easily or adapts easily to a new group, and just as easily breaks up undesirable relationships. He is open and says what he thinks, and may even say things without thinking.
- He is not necessarily altruistic since he deals with others because he needs them. The topics of conversation are trivial and superficial, the everyday things and even gossips. He is open and talkative, objective and a person of action. He is tediously long-winded in his interests and has difficulty keeping his attention focused on only one thing.
- Most people in the population are extroverts.
Extroverts are good managers, salespeople, trainers, presenters, journalists, or in areas where it is important to interact with people and things.
The ambiverts
There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum. Carl Jung
The experts in ambiversion say that the majority of the population are ambiverts. That is, we all fall somewhere in the attitude spectrum between introversion and extroversion. It is a new concept, unknown to Jung, the founder of the theory of introversion and extroversion, although he himself understood that there could be an intermediate degree between these two opposites.
This intermediate degree is the ambiversion. In my opinion, the ambivert is fundamentally an introvert, that is, he is rooted in introversion, but he also does well outside of his shell, to which he needs to return. He is versatile like a duck that can fly as well as walk or neither if it so wishes.
He does well in solitude and in a crowd. In fact, to be himself he needs to alternate between being alone by himself and being in a crowd with others. He feels both needs, so that he can either spend days away from home, or spend days without going outside the house.
Faced with a specific stimulus, the reactions of an introvert and an extrovert are quite predictable; the reaction of an ambivert, on the other hand, is neither clear nor predictable, not even to himself. It depends on many factors, including the current interests of the individual. The ambiverts can be excellent conversationalists and communicators on the one hand, and good listeners on the other.
The first person to use the term “ambivert” was the American psychologist Edmund S. Conklin in 1923, according to Ian Davidson, a professor of Psychology at York University, Canada, in an article dated 2017. Davidson explains that a psychologist at the time said that Conklin “invented the word” to describe those individuals who find themselves between the introverts (who live in their heads) and the extroverts (who live outside of their heads).
The ambiverts find themselves in the middle of the spectrum between extroversion and introversion; they are not very talkative nor do they live too focused on themselves; they do not have a strong and almost compulsive need to interact with others, like the pure extrovert, nor do they seek solitude to escape from reality, like the introverts. They are reflective, tolerant, ambivalent, bilingual or polyglot, and eclectic, and they live with one foot in each of the two worlds.
In summary
- The ambivert is not afraid of being the center of attention, depending on the context and situation. In many cases, he prefers to simply observe quietly without actively participating.
- He enjoys and has fun at parties and social events for hours on end, but his energy can suddenly run out and he needs to withdraw to his comfort zone.
- Like the extroverts, he likes to talk, but not about trivial topics or football.
- He likes to socialize, but sometimes he is reserved, especially if he does not know anyone. And he will not take the initiative to introduce himself like an extrovert would.
- Some of his friends think he is an extrovert, and others think he is an introvert, this is because he presents himself in different ways in different situations.
- In general, he thinks before speaking; if someone speaks a lot, he listens; if others are quiet, he speaks.
- The ambiverts are the best at dealing with the extremes that tend to cause the collapse of the introverts or extroverts, since they have a greater degree of tolerance at the extreme of introversion and at the extreme of extroversion.
The introverts stay at home on a sunny day, the extroverts stay out on a rainy day, and the ambiverts take advantage of the sun and steer clear of the rain.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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