Races and nations as functions of the world whole

was the basis of the individual character. Polarity, a balance of extremes, is a necessary concept for thinking about many aspects of life, and Jung in analysing the structure of the psyche into four main functions, which have been described as ‘our means of adaptation to the world’, sees these as two pairs of opposites. We naturally tend to visualise them as a cross—and the four-ended or four-sided figure was something that Jung found constantly recurring in people’s symbolic imagery; and it is helpful to remember also the ancient Chinese Yin-Yang figure, which is a very subtle form of polarity and carries with it in the surrounding circle the symbol of its own unity.

In Jung’s types, then, there is a double polarity. These functions could be described as different ways in which the individual human being relates himself to the content of his psyche—those which meet him from the external world and those which meet him from the inner world of consciousness. Two of these functions Jung calls rational, because they involve making a judgement; the other two he calls irrational, because they involve no more than a perception. The two rational functions are intellect and feeling, the former judging the world—both inner and outer—by thought, the latter judging by whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. The criterion of the former is truth or falsehood, of the latter attraction or aversion. In this sense intellect can be called objective and feeling subjective. The other two of Jung’s functions are intuition and sensation, which are two different ways of perceiving the world. Intuition grasps the whole in all its inter-relationships but is not so much concerned with details; sensation takes in the minutest details but does not grasp wholes. Intuition is concerned with meanings, and regards facts as relatively unimportant in themselves; sensation is concerned with facts, but is unable to interpret their meanings. All this has been put here in simplified black-and-white terms, to express the polarity of the extremes represented; but as the different functions occur in reality in different human types they are of course modified, usually by one auxiliary function, and by the over-all tendency toward either introversion or extraversion.

In any individual one of the four functions is the ‘superior function’, that is to say it is the one with which the individual works best, and most consistently, in a conscious way. The

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