What Is Neo-Jungian Typology

Contents

• What is NJT?
• What is a cognitive type?
• Type Is Not Neuroscientific
• So What Can We Relay On To Make Our Typings?
• Cognitive Type Relationship With Behavior?
• What Does NJT Describe Well

What is NJT?

You can't understand Neo-Jungian Typology without first understanding what it is. So we will begin first with what Jungian Typology is. Here I think the answer is clear. Jungian Typology means you are using the system of Carl Jung from his book Psychological Types. Neo-Jungian Typology means that you begin with a Jungian Typology and then rework it and expand it.

Neo-Jungian Typology is a umbrella term for many different typologies rather than just one typology system. The particular system that I use is based on the work of Michael Pierce in his book Motes And Beams.

What we are looking for when we type someone is their psychological type. We are trying to understand the kind of mind they have. To classify something deeply personal to the person, the mind which is essential to how they experience the world.

Type Is Not Neuroscientific

It is very important to note that we aren't typing the brain. Many people have tried to draw connections between the brain and cognitive type. I don't think this is reliable or sound.

The brain is very interconnected, rarely does one region of the brain act in isolation. The clean divides that we make between Feeling, Thinking, Introversion and Extroversion break down when we begin to ask these question at the level of neuroscience.

Why should concepts that exist at the level of the mind show up at the level of brain structures? I think this expectation is very unreasonable. If you desire a system that maps human differences at the level of the brain then cognitive typology isn't the right tool for you. You should do medical research with this question in mind. This way you end up with a system of human differences that respects the current knowledge we have about brain difference. The relevant variables that show up at the level of the brain will also be accounted for. What I am saying is that if you want a neuroscientific valid typology of personality then NJT isn't for you. If you try to make NJT into a scientific backed system I think you end up being dishonest.

So What Can We Relay On To Make Our Typings?

The mind itself. How does a person experience the world? What is easy for them them to access and what is difficult? By focusing on differences in the subjectivity of people and the way that it varies I think we can come to an understanding of type. This is what NJT is attempting to do.

When we look at cognitive or psychological type what we are doing is trying to make sense of the kind of conciousness of a particular person. We do this by examining their inner life. Obviously we can't do this directly and so we try to model their mental life from the outside.

What this means is that a person cognitive type describes the structure of their mind. We focus on the things that are stable that last and can be relied on and we have a technical language to assist us in describing this mental life.

It is important here to know that a persons cognitive type isn't an empirical description. Rather it is a phenomenological one, phenomenology being the study of the way in which a person experiences the world.

Cognitive Type Relationship With Behavior

Cognitive type has a very weak link with the behavior. What this means is that due to the psychological focus of typology a single cognitive function can manifest itself in a variety of ways that are not consistent across people. A person cognitive type lives not in the world but in their own subjectivity making it hard to form a test for it.

In spite of this I still think it is helpful to point to specific behavior and ideas as starting point to assist people to learn what a typological concept can look like. In the case of a cognitive function, this doesn't mean that this behavior must come from this cognitive function but rather many people who use this cognitive function have shown this behavior. This distinction is essential to avoiding stereotyping and it's evils.

What Does NJT Describe Well

NJT works very well to understand a person mind and put it in relation to other people. NJT is also wonderful for understanding how and why someone will go about doing something. It gives a very robust framework for understanding the dynamics of the mind and a roadmap for personal development.