Chapter V: The Introvert Vs. the Extravert

If the reader has compared Freud’s sexual theory with Adler’s power theory, he must have been struck by the fact that _both theories sound plausible_. It is certainly true that the conventional morality of civilization causes us to suppress certain instinctive desires. If a man is by nature polygamous, and is taught the ideal of monogamy in such a way as to believe that even the thought of illicit love is a sin, it is reasonable to think that he may repress his polygamous tendencies, thus paving the way for an unconscious conflict and a neurosis.

But, on the other hand, who has not, at least at times, had the painful feeling of inferiority and not been stirred by an ambition to get on top? What seems more natural than that the stammerer, Demosthenes, should strive to achieve greatness as an orator, or that a club-footed Byron should attempt to make himself a conqueror of women and a famous poet? Certainly the struggle for power is as widespread and clearly discernible in life as the instinctive drive for sexuality and a full love-life.

It is at this point that the greatness of Jung emerges. He had, in the course of his investigations, come upon a startling divergence of reaction among his patients, so that he was forced to conclude that there were two kinds of human being, as different, if not more different, from each other, than the two sexes. These two types he named the _extravert_ and the _introvert_.

He next discovered that these two types had long been noted by men of genius under such designations as objective and subjective, romantic and classical, realistic and idealistic, materialistic and spiritual. William James called them the tough-minded and the tender-minded. William Blake, the English poet, said of them:

“There are two classes of men: the _prolific_ and the _devouring_. Religion is an endeavor to reconcile the two.”

Jung interprets prolific here to mean, “the fruitful, who brings forth out of himself”; and “the devouring, as the man who swallows up and takes into himself.”

Needless to say the prolific type, which has appeared under the designations of the objective, romantic, realistic, materialistic and tough-minded, is, more exactly defined, the extravert, and the devouring type which was also called the subjective, classical, idealistic, spiritual and tender-minded, is the introvert.

What characterizes the extravert is that _his interest is normally centered on things outside himself_. An excellent example was our own Theodore Roosevelt. He was thoroughly extraverted, with instant response to the world about him. His attention was given wholeheartedly to anything that caught it. He was a man with an immense diversity of interests, from birds and flowers, to simplified spelling, from a local political fight to an international war; poetry, Greek coins, history, hunting, sports, finance,--the list was almost endless. And into each of these interests he could throw himself full force, and with astonishing power. He was as interested in men as in things, and his friends included people from every walk of life. He was well adapted to life, and made himself at home almost anywhere. What characterized him chiefly was that he gave himself without stint, went into action at a moment’s notice, had a tendency to practicality and common sense which kept him from being an extremist; was, in short, an excellent opportunist, knowing, very often, just when to strike, just what to say, with a decisiveness that won through. He was the fighting man, the man of action, the man of his own time, his own age, his own country.

He was, in other words, a man “orientated by the object.” That is to say, his life was determined by things and thoughts and ideas coming to him from the _outside_, in the main. If an enemy showed his head, he struck; if a friend, he clasped hands; if a popular movement appeared, he led it; if there was a war he wanted to be in it; if someone else originated a good idea (not too radical) he took it over and made it his.

It will be seen from this that the extravert is normally a man who is a harmonious part of the world _as it is_. This does not mean, of course, that he will be merely a conservative; for the world is in constant change, and an intelligent extravert will be one-to-one with the forward tide. But since he is, to a large extent, bound up in the things outside himself, he is, mainly, a reflection of the world. He could almost say of himself, “I am--what I love.”

His shortcomings are obvious. He covers a lot of ground, but necessarily in a shallow way. He cannot be deep, because depth implies a certain slowness, a certain amount of meditation and constant study, a brooding and solitude. He originates but little, for it is the thoughts and ideas of others which interest him. He is an enemy to anything really new, anything pregnant with the future, because it collides with the world as it is, which is the world he loves. Finally, he lacks an inner life, the more creative and profound life; a fact which the keen-sighted Roosevelt knew very well, for he said of himself, “My danger is that I forget I have a soul.”

Such is a brief sketch of the extravert as he appears in a pronounced, perhaps an extreme form. The value of using an extreme case is, of course, that he covers the whole territory, and we can see in him the various sides of the type. Hence, it will be valuable to consider an extreme introvert, the direct opposite of Roosevelt, so that we may come to an understanding of the contrasting type.

If the extravert is characterized by the fact that his interest is normally centered in things outside himself, the introvert is characterized by the fact that his interest is normally centered on things _inside_ himself. From the extravert’s standpoint this would mean that the introvert was a man who thought of nothing but himself, was consumed with his own aches and pains, his own fears and hopes, and perhaps certain erratic and absurd or dangerous ideas. For everything that the extravert holds most dear, as action, fitting in, being a “good fellow,” getting on, the introvert looks upon as rather shallow and cheap, and vice versa, everything most valuable to the introvert seems foolish, absurd, ridiculous, dangerous to the extravert.

Naturally, to be interested in the things inside oneself need not be anything trivial. Within oneself is the world of thought and ideas, the world of imagination, the world out of which every art, every religion, every philosophy, every invention, every fresh discovery of science, every new idea for the advancement and development of the race has sprung. Kant, oblivious of the world, sat and brooded, until out of himself sprang a great philosophy which wrought a change in the mind of Europe. A Jesus from his solitary brooding brings forth a new religion. A Michaelangelo in his isolation gives birth to colossal art.

We find in Friedrich Nietzsche an example of the extreme introvert. His life, like those of most introverts who were extreme, was devoid of action and hence without history. There is very little to say about it, for the real drama took place within him. He served for a short time in a war, but was discharged because of sickness. He taught philology for a time in a university. But finally, on a small income, he retired, and led a secluded life, producing his works, until, while still in the prime of life, he became insane. He did not marry; he had but few friends; he was a solitary.

Where Roosevelt presents the picture of a man at home in the world, Nietzsche is seen as a stranger in it, an alien. Where Roosevelt went straight out and acted, Nietzsche withdrew into his shell. Where Roosevelt forgot himself in others, in causes, in the glamour and absorption of _things_, Nietzsche remained in a state of _acute self-consciousness_. A Roosevelt glories in the world and thinks it is good and the people in it excellent and interesting; a Nietzsche sees it as full of horrible and terrible things and is filled with revulsion at the sight of human cowardice, slothfulness and depravity. Where a Roosevelt spreads himself all over, interested in a multitude of objects, a Nietzsche concentrates more and more on a few things, a few ideas, a life which shuts out as much as possible anything that will disturb his predetermined path.

This is the normal attitude of the introvert. He is ill adapted to the outer world, because he is absorbed in the inner world. And this absorption leads, in the case of a Nietzsche, to great discoveries and great works.

If we remember Jung’s conception of the collective unconscious as the summation of the past, the storehouse of wisdom, the creative source, we may readily understand that the collective unconscious is the psychic stream of life itself and that it not only bears the past in it, but also the budding future. That which is to be lies creatively within it, and is revealed to the great artist, the great thinker in majestic symbols and so-called visions. That is why we say that great art and great thought are always ahead of the world. For the extreme introvert, absorbed in himself, lives in that world of imagination where the products of the collective unconscious become known to him. He has deep intuitions, he actually may have symbols and ideas presented to him in dream and phantasy, even in hallucination. The English mystic, Blake, actually saw the forms and shapes which he drew, and claimed, also, that some of his poems were dictated to him by a voice. I have already spoken of Moses’ experience with the burning bush and the voice of God.

It was quite natural therefore that Nietzsche should have been a forerunner. Out of his years of solitude there came at last an eruption from the unconscious which was nothing short of amazing. Each part of Thus Spake Zarathustra, and each part is about a hundred pages long, was written in ten days. The thoughts and words came so fast that Nietzsche could not keep up with them. If he was walking, he had to write on scraps of paper. The experience was so overwhelming that he compared it with that of the Biblical prophets, and said that not in two thousand years had there been another such case of inspiration.

What is Thus Spake Zarathustra? It is an incomparable picture of the collective unconscious, as Jung points out, and foreshadows the new psychology, which by the slow, painfully cumulative method of science has come to some of the same discoveries that Nietzsche grasped intuitively. It also is an indictment of Christian civilization and foreshadows its breaking up by the erection of a new principle, the Anti-Christ, the principle of power.

It is, therefore, a revolutionary document, so far in advance of the time when it was written that Nietzsche dared to show it only to seven people, most of whom rejected it. He felt that he was in utter isolation, a “voice crying in the wilderness.”

What Nietzsche celebrates (as shown in the section on Adler) is _will-to-power_. The doctrine of Christianity is love, and the rule of love has certain implications. It means that everyone is included, for in the eyes of love the object is always valuable. To a loving mother the child who is an idiot is as precious (if not more so) than his more normal brothers and sisters. She loves him: that gives him value. Hence the rule of love means equality, fraternity, democracy. It leads to the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number. It leads, in short, to the idea of numbers; the rule of the many.

Its dangers are obvious. Everything new, original, different is pulled down to the common level. It breeds the spirit of conformity, and finally eventuates in the Babbitts, the ideals of Main Street, the formation of Ku Klux Klans. Such are the final fruits of a rampant rule of love. If your neighbors are as valuable (really more valuable) than yourself (for love always places the object above oneself) then you should submit to your neighbors, live and do as they live and do, and give up your own individual path, your own way, and anything original or new that may be created by you.

It is against this that Nietzsche comes with a voice which is far deeper than a personal voice. It is the protest of the collective unconscious itself; it is a deep racial movement against a violation of man’s own future. Hence, Nietzsche sets the individual against the race; he raises an aristocratic ideal against the democratic; he celebrates new values, original things, the exceptional and the different. As against love, he rears the doctrine of power. And by power he means the setting of oneself against the race, and the triumph of oneself, for in this triumph, the new is born, the new art, new idea, new thinking, and the race is forced into new paths of greatness.

But, seen in another light, the meaning of Zarathustra is the _revolt of the introvert against the extravert_.

Western civilization is the civilization of the extravert. A civilization built up on the principle of love is one which puts the accent on others, on things outside ourself. As the saying goes, it takes two to love; there is always the other, and that other is more important than oneself, if it is really love. Hence, love is the root of the extraverted attitude. As I said of Roosevelt, he might have put it of himself: “I am--what I love.”

Such a civilization, therefore, tends toward action, democracy, the rule of the many, invention, business (the exchange between people), and since the power of a civilization over the individual is almost overwhelming, it means that a Christian civilization has thwarted, twisted, deformed all those whose natures were not in accord with it. Christianity has been a violation of the introvert.

For, naturally, what Nietzsche depicts in his superman and his will-to-power, is himself. He depicts the psychology of the introvert. The introvert is governed by the power principle. Where the extravert finds relief, and only functions happily, by losing himself in others, by giving himself to the world outside him; the introvert finds relief only by remembering himself, by refusing to allow others to absorb him, by withdrawing from the outer world. The introvert is constantly striving to preserve the integrity of his ego. He seeks an inner freedom. He feels bound by the demands of others. Action takes him away from the stream of his ideas, his inner brooding, and he will not have much of it. Serving others often seems to him a shallow thing, a waste of time, compared with the great discovery he is tracking, or the art he is aiming to achieve.

Power vs. love--introvert vs. extravert.

And how is it that two such dissimilar human beings appear in the same world? We have only to go back to the root-instincts in man to come to some sort of understanding. As we know, the two great instincts are that of self-preservation and that of race-preservation. Self-preservation leads us to think of ourselves, to turn the eye inward. It is selfish, hence, it is power, not love. Race-preservation leads us to think of others, of wife and family, of neighbors, of the world, to turn the eye outward. It concerns interest in others; hence, it is more love than power.

The symbol of self-preservation is eating, devouring (we eat just for ourselves); the symbol of race-preservation is sexuality (the motive in sexuality is, unconsciously, to beget offspring).

One sees now how this discovery of the types by Jung settles the question as to the puzzling opposition between the theories of Freud and Adler.

Freud’s theory is the sexual, Adler’s the will-to-power. In other words, as Jung has pointed out, Freud is an extravert, and his theory reflects himself; Adler is an introvert, and his theory is typical of his type.

Both theories are, in a sense, true; only we must never apply the Freudian theory to an introvert, nor the Adler theory to an extravert.

It will be seen now how the theory of the collective unconscious includes both the theory of Freud and the theory of Adler and transcends them both. In the collective unconscious are both the summed up wisdom of the race with its creative forward push and also the instincts. The roots of both ego and sex are to be found there, flowering in one individual more along the ego path, in another more along the sex path.

The trouble with both Freud and Adler, according to Jung, is that they stop at this point. Their theories are _reductive_. The one reduces human nature back to sex, the other to power. We are _nothing but_--this or that. But, actually, we are also all we have experienced, and not only that, but also all the race has experienced. We are also creative. We cannot explain man only in terms of the past, in the things from which he originated (finally, the instincts), we must also explain him in terms of the future, his possibilities, the new life he is seeking, the greatness which is to be.

In short, we cannot cure a neurosis merely by explaining to a man that he has an Oedipus complex or a homosexual tendency; neither can we cure him by showing him that he has an inferiority complex and hence an abnormal will-to-power. We can only cure him by giving him a future to live; he must go out and feel that he has something to live for.

Just how psycho-analysis arrives at such a result must be reserved for a later chapter.