Two Attitudes — Why Does the Psyche Need Both?
Carl Gustav Jung understood extraversion and introversion not as behavioral traits and not merely as personality characteristics, but as two fundamentally different attitudes of the psyche toward the object. The extraverted attitude gives the object determining significance and directs psychic energy toward it; the introverted attitude, by contrast, seeks to limit the object’s power over the subject and to withdraw libido from the object.
But why do two opposite attitudes exist at all? What advantage does the psyche gain from each of them?
Jung answered this question by means of a biological analogy.
He pointed to two fundamentally different ways in which living organisms adapt. One is based on high fertility combined with relatively weak protection and a shorter lifespan of the individual organism. The other is based on substantial investment in the self-preservation of the individual combined with relatively low fertility.
Jung associated this contrast with the two psychic attitudes. The extravert tends to “spend” himself or herself and to distribute psychic energy among objects, whereas the introvert tends to preserve energy, restrict the demands of the object, and establish a more protected position.
This analogy shows why both attitudes can be adaptive. It does not yet explain, however, what advantage the psyche itself gains from the existence of two opposite ways of relating to the environment.
If extraversion and introversion are considered within the proposed model of consciousness, another answer becomes possible.
The extraverted and introverted attitudes create two different and simultaneously necessary conditions for the generation of psychic content:
Extraversion enables the psyche not to lose independent reality.
Introversion enables the psyche not to drown in the diversity of independent reality.
From this distinction, a principle can be derived that may be called the principle of psychic complementarity.
Extraversion and Introversion as Relations to the Environment
In the proposed model of consciousness, extraversion and introversion are defined through the relation of the subject to the environment.
In the extraverted attitude, the environment is posited from the outset as existing independently of the subject.
In the introverted attitude, the environment is posited from the outset as existing for the satisfaction of the subject’s needs.
This difference is fundamental.
It does not arise only after the psyche has already formed content about objects. Rather, it underlies the very manner in which such content is generated.
Psychological functions do not receive ready-made content from outside. They generate content about the environment themselves. The way in which they generate it, however, depends on the attitude.
Extraverted functions generate concrete content.
Introverted functions generate abstract content.
Abstraction here does not necessarily mean generalization. It means disregarding those features of an object that are irrelevant to the subject.
The distinction between extraverted and introverted attitudes therefore becomes, at the same time, a distinction between two ways of constructing a model of the environment.
The Problem of the Inexhaustible Diversity of the Environment
Every object has a multitude of features.
A tree has a certain height, a certain shape of trunk, a certain structure of bark, a particular arrangement of branches, a certain number and form of leaves, a color, a smell, an age, and a position relative to other objects. Its branches move in the wind, its leaves change color, birds and insects appear in its crown, fruits develop, it casts a shadow, and it interacts with countless other objects and processes.
And this is only a tiny fraction of the possible description of a single tree.
The environment contains a practically inexhaustible variety of objects, processes, features, and relations.
The psyche cannot construct an exhaustive model of everything that exists.
Nor does it need to.
The subject must orient itself within the environment and satisfy its needs within it. Selection is therefore necessary.
It is here that the fundamental advantage of the introverted attitude becomes apparent.
The Advantage of Introversion: Selection of What Is Relevant
In the introverted attitude, the environment is considered in relation to the needs of the subject.
This gives rise to the distinction between relevant and irrelevant features.
Relevance may be defined as the significance of an object’s features for the subject.
If a person needs shelter from the sun, the relevant features of a tree are those that make it usable as a source of shade.
If the person needs fruit, a different set of features becomes relevant.
If the tree blocks the road, the relevant features are those that define it as an obstacle.
If a person is looking for a place to rest, the set of relevant features changes again.
The object remains the same.
What changes is the selection of the features that participate in the formation of its abstract model.
The introverted attitude therefore allows the psyche to avoid modeling the environment in all of its inexhaustible concreteness.
It answers the question:
What, among everything that exists, is relevant to the subject?
This radically reduces the complexity of the psychic model.
But this is not merely a matter of saving psychic energy.
Something more fundamental emerges: a model of the environment that is usable for the subject.
The overwhelming multiplicity of objects and features is transformed into a structured environment of the subject:
this is food;
this is shelter;
this is an obstacle;
this is a path;
this is a tool;
this is a danger;
this is a place to rest.
The introverted attitude therefore makes it possible to select features in relation to the needs of the subject.
This is its fundamental adaptive advantage.
Relevance Is Not Feeling
At this point, an important distinction must be made between relevance and the content generated by the feeling function.
In the proposed model, the feeling function generates the significance of knowledge for the subject.
Relevance, by contrast, determines which features of an object participate in the formation of its abstract model.
These are different relationships.
If a tree is regarded as a source of shade, this does not yet mean that the feeling function has generated an evaluation of this content.
At a more fundamental level, something else has already happened: from among the many features of the tree, those features that are relevant to the subject in the given relation have been selected.
Relevance is therefore neither an independent psychological function nor the result of the feeling function.
It follows directly from the introverted attitude.
But Selection Creates a New Problem
The advantage of the introverted attitude also creates a principled limitation.
If the psyche selects the features of objects according to their relevance to the subject, a question arises:
What happens to features whose significance the subject does not yet know?
Consider the tree again.
A person approaches it in order to hide from the sun. The shade is relevant.
But the tree may bear fruit whose existence the person does not yet know.
There may be a hollow in its trunk.
One of its branches may be damaged and about to fall.
An animal may be hidden in the crown.
The tree may possess a feature whose significance will become apparent only tomorrow or many years later.
If the psyche modeled the environment exclusively through already established relevance, a fundamental problem would arise:
It would be able to discover primarily that whose significance for the subject was already known.
A closed circle would emerge.
The subject selects what is relevant on the basis of already existing needs and models.
An abstract model of the environment is constructed from relevant features.
New content is generated in relation to that model.
As a result, the psyche again preferentially registers what can already appear relevant within the existing structure.
It is precisely here that the advantage of the opposite attitude becomes visible.
The Advantage of Extraversion: The Independence of the Object from the Subject
In the extraverted attitude, the environment is posited as existing independently of the subject.
This means that the features of an object do not have to justify their presence in psychic content in advance through their usefulness or relevance to the subject.
The object is modeled as an object of independent reality.
For this reason, the extraverted attitude makes possible the discovery of:
- what the subject was not looking for;
- what the subject does not yet know to be significant;
- features of objects unrelated to the subject’s current needs;
- changes that occur independently of the subject’s goals;
- new possible uses of objects;
- previously unknown regularities in the environment.
The extraverted attitude secures the openness of the psyche to independent reality.
Metaphorically speaking, it allows reality to surprise the subject.
This has fundamental adaptive importance.
The environment changes.
The needs of the subject change.
Objects possess properties whose significance cannot be derived in advance from the subject’s existing needs.
A psyche capable of modeling only what is already relevant would therefore be limited by its own previous model of reality.
The extraverted attitude breaks this circle.
Concrete Content as a Source of the New
In the proposed model, extraverted functions generate concrete content.
Concreteness acquires a special significance here.
A concrete object contains features that may appear entirely insignificant to the subject at the present moment.
Yet among these features may be something that later becomes important.
Concrete content is therefore not merely a less economical or less abstracted form of knowledge.
It has an independent significance.
It preserves the possibility of discovering a relevance that is not yet known.
Today a feature is irrelevant.
Tomorrow the situation changes, and that same feature becomes vital.
The extraverted attitude therefore preserves access to what has not yet entered the existing relation between object and subject.
Two Opposite Dangers
A fundamental symmetry now becomes visible.
Imagine a psyche possessing only the extraverted attitude.
It would be maximally open to the diversity of the environment.
But another problem would arise.
The psyche would have to deal with an enormous number of concrete objects and features without possessing a principle for selecting them in relation to the needs of the subject.
There would be an excess of concreteness.
Every tree would be precisely this tree.
Every object would be a unique configuration of numerous features.
Every situation would be a new concrete constellation of the environment.
The possibility of efficiently reducing the complexity of the environment in relation to the subject would be lost.
The introverted attitude solves this problem.
But if only the introverted attitude remained, the opposite danger would arise.
The psyche would select what is relevant very efficiently but would risk being enclosed within a world whose structure is determined by the subject’s already existing needs.
It could lose its openness to the unexpected.
Thus:
Extraversion without introversion: too much world and too little selection.
Introversion without extraversion: too much selection and too little world.
Openness and Selectivity
The two attitudes may therefore be understood as responses to two opposite problems that necessarily confront the psyche.
The first problem is openness.
How can the psyche preserve the possibility of discovering something whose significance for the subject is not yet known?
This possibility is provided by the extraverted attitude.
The second problem is selectivity.
How can the psyche select from the inexhaustible diversity of the environment what is relevant to the subject?
This possibility is provided by the introverted attitude.
The distinction can therefore be formulated as follows:
The extraverted attitude secures the openness of the psyche to independent reality.
The introverted attitude secures the selectivity of the psyche in relation to the needs of the subject.
At this point, what becomes visible is not merely opposition, but complementarity.
Bohr’s Principle of Complementarity
The concept of complementarity is associated above all with Niels Bohr and the development of quantum mechanics.
In quantum physics, it became clear that certain phenomena cannot be exhaustively described through a single classical picture. Different experimental conditions make different aspects of a quantum system accessible, while the conditions required to reveal one aspect may be incompatible with those required to reveal another.
Bohr proposed that such descriptions should be regarded not merely as competing or contradictory, but as complementary.
Each is necessary for a more complete description of the phenomenon, even though they cannot simply be reduced to a single classical representation.
This physical principle should, of course, not be transferred directly to the psyche.
The psyche is not a quantum object merely because oppositions can be found in its structure.
The point is different.
The structure of the idea of complementarity can serve as a starting point for the formulation of an independent principle of psychic organization.
From Opposition to Complementarity
Opposition and complementarity are not the same thing.
Opposition describes the relation between two different forms of psychic organization.
Complementarity answers another question:
Why does the system need both?
If A and B are merely opposites, one might suppose that one of them is superior and the other represents a deficiency, deviation, or less successful solution.
If A and B are complementary, the structure is fundamentally different.
Each side provides possibilities unavailable to the other.
At the same time, each of these possibilities is connected with a limitation that is counterbalanced by the opposite side.
This is precisely the relationship that can be seen between the extraverted and introverted attitudes.
The extraverted attitude preserves the independence of the object from the needs of the subject, but it does not itself provide the principle of selecting features according to their relevance.
The introverted attitude provides the selection of what is relevant, but in doing so it loses part of the concreteness of the object and, with it, part of the object’s independence from the subject.
The gain of each attitude is inseparable from its limitation.
That is precisely why neither can replace the other.
The Principle of Psychic Complementarity
On this basis, the following principle may be proposed:
Principle of psychic complementarity: Opposite psychic attitudes and psychological functions constitute mutually irreducible ways of generating psychic content. Each makes possible forms of content that cannot be generated in the opposite way. The structure of psychic reality therefore requires not the abolition of opposites, but their coexistence within the psyche.
Applied specifically to extraversion and introversion, the principle can be formulated more precisely:
The extraverted and introverted attitudes are psychically complementary. The extraverted attitude makes possible the generation of content about the environment independently of the relevance of its features to the subject. The introverted attitude makes possible the selection of features relevant to the subject and the generation of abstract content on this basis. Neither attitude can replace the other, because the elimination of one would result in the loss of openness to independent reality, while the elimination of the other would result in the loss of the possibility of selecting content in relation to the needs of the subject.
Why “Psychic” Rather Than “Psychological” Complementarity?
It is useful here to distinguish between two possible expressions: psychological complementarity and psychic complementarity.
“Psychological complementarity” could be understood as a methodological principle of psychology, for example as the need to combine different psychological theories or different ways of describing the human being.
The principle proposed here, however, does not primarily concern the scientific description of the psyche.
Complementarity is meant to characterize the organization of the psyche itself.
Extraverted and introverted attitudes do not exist because it is useful for the researcher to view the psyche from two perspectives. They constitute two different conditions for the generation of psychic content.
For this reason, the term “principle of psychic complementarity” appears more precise.
Complementarity as a Possible General Principle of the Model of Consciousness
The significance of this principle may, however, extend far beyond the opposition between extraversion and introversion.
The proposed model of consciousness is fundamentally structured through oppositions.
With consciousness arise:
- subject and environment;
- consciousness and the unconscious;
- extraverted and introverted attitude;
- perception of invariants and perception of changes;
- generation of the significance of knowledge for the subject and generation of the significance of knowledge for the non-subject.
This raises a more general question:
Why is the psyche structured through oppositions?
Opposites are easily understood as conflicts: one side interferes with the other, and development is then expected to lead to their reconciliation, synthesis, or overcoming.
The principle of psychic complementarity suggests another possibility.
Perhaps opposites exist because a single way of generating content is in principle incapable of producing the full diversity of psychic content required for the existence of psychic reality.
Opposition would then not be a defect in the organization of the psyche, but a condition for expanding its possibilities.
Complementarity Does Not Mean Mixture
This distinction is especially important.
If two psychic attitudes or functions are complementary, it does not follow that their mixture would constitute an optimal state.
On the contrary.
Their complementarity has meaning precisely because they remain different.
If the introverted attitude ceased to select features according to their relevance to the subject, it would lose the advantage produced by this selection.
If the extraverted attitude admitted into the model of the object only those features already relevant to the subject, it would lose its openness to independent reality and thus the possibility of discovering what is not yet significant to the subject.
Complementarity therefore does not require the abolition of the boundary between opposites, but the preservation of their functional difference.
This also makes it possible to understand psychic wholeness differently.
Wholeness does not necessarily mean the merging of differences.
The psyche may form an integrated system precisely because different and mutually irreducible ways of generating content remain distinct within it.
A Possible Relation to Exploration and Exploitation
In theories of learning, behavioral science, decision research, and artificial intelligence, the problem of exploration and exploitation is well known.
A system must, on the one hand, make use of already known possibilities and, on the other, explore the environment and discover new ones.
If it uses only what is already known, it may never discover better possibilities.
If it only explores, it constantly acquires new information but fails to make sufficient use of what has already been discovered.
There is an interesting structural resemblance between this problem and the opposition between introverted and extraverted attitudes.
The introverted attitude makes it possible to form content about the environment in relation to the needs of the subject and thus to make use of already established relevance.
The extraverted attitude keeps the psyche open to features and changes whose significance for the subject has not yet been established.
It would, however, be unjustified to identify extraversion with exploration and introversion with exploitation.
These are different theoretical constructions.
The structural similarity lies only in the fact that an adaptive system must preserve two possibilities at once: to make use of already established relevance and to remain open to what has not yet been recognized as relevant.
This relation also helps explain why both attitudes may be necessary.
A New Understanding of Compensation
Jung held that the conscious attitude is compensated by the opposite unconscious attitude.
If consciousness is predominantly extraverted, the unconscious acquires an introverted orientation.
If consciousness is predominantly introverted, the unconscious compensates it through an extraverted orientation.
Within the principle of psychic complementarity, this observation receives a possible functional explanation.
The opposite attitude is necessary not merely because the psyche supposedly strives to restore an abstract equilibrium.
It preserves those possibilities of generating content that are necessarily restricted by the dominant attitude.
The more strongly the psyche is oriented toward the environment as something existing independently of the subject, the more necessary becomes the possibility of selecting features according to their relevance to the subject.
The more strongly the psyche selects features according to their relevance to the subject, the more important becomes the possibility of generating content that is not limited by the already existing structure of relevance.
Compensation can therefore be understood as a possible consequence of complementarity.
The opposite attitude is preserved because the dominant attitude, precisely by virtue of its advantages, necessarily creates its own domain of limitation.
Every Advantage Creates a Domain of Limitation
This may be one of the most important consequences of the principle of psychic complementarity.
The advantage of a particular way of generating psychic content cannot be considered separately from the limitation that arises together with that advantage.
The introverted attitude is efficient because it makes it possible to disregard irrelevant features.
Yet precisely for this reason, features that have not yet been recognized as relevant remain outside the abstract content it forms.
The extraverted attitude preserves the concreteness of the object and the independence of the environment from the subject.
Yet precisely for this reason, by itself it does not provide selection of features in relation to the subject’s needs.
A more general formulation can therefore be proposed:
Every specialized way of generating psychic content gains its particular possibilities through a specific limitation of content. The opposite way of generating content makes accessible what cannot be generated in the first way because of that limitation.
If this hypothesis is correct, the principle of psychic complementarity may extend far beyond extraversion and introversion.
Complementarity of the Psychological Functions
The same question can be asked about opposite psychological functions.
In the proposed model, the perceptual functions differ according to the content they generate:
S generates the perception of invariants;
N generates the perception of changes.
Complementarity may also be assumed here.
To construct a model of an object in time, both what remains the same and what changes must be perceived.
If only changes were perceived, it would be impossible to determine what has changed, because change presupposes some persisting identity.
If only invariants were perceived, change would disappear from the content: the model would contain what remains the same, but not what becomes different.
Invariance and change are therefore not merely opposites.
They may be understood as complementary forms of content necessary for modeling an object in time.
A corresponding question arises with the rational functions.
The feeling function F generates the significance of knowledge for the subject.
The thinking function T generates the significance of knowledge for the non-subject.
Here too, one function cannot replace the other.
If only the significance of knowledge for the subject were generated, psychic reality would lack the significance of knowledge for the non-subject.
If only the significance of knowledge for the non-subject were generated, the significance of knowledge for the subject itself would be absent.
Thus, opposite functions also generate different forms of content that cannot be produced by the same function.
The principle of psychic complementarity may therefore operate at several levels of psychic organization.
Subject and Environment
If this line of thought is continued, an even more fundamental level appears.
In the proposed model, psychic reality is defined through the dichotomy:
subject — environment
The subject cannot be replaced by the environment.
The environment cannot be reduced to the subject.
Psychic reality arises as the unity of this dichotomy.
Without the subject, the significance of knowledge for the subject cannot be defined.
Without the environment, no content can arise about what is not the subject.
The extraverted and introverted attitudes can therefore be considered as two different relations within this fundamental structure.
In the extraverted attitude, the independence of the environment from the subject is preserved:
The environment exists independently of the subject.
In the introverted attitude, the environment is considered in relation to the needs of the subject:
The environment exists for the satisfaction of the subject’s needs.
These two relations cannot be reduced to one another.
If only the extraverted principle remained, psychic content would lose the possibility of selecting features of the environment according to their relevance to the subject.
If only the introverted principle remained, content would be restricted to features relevant to the subject, and the psyche would lose its openness to those features of independent reality whose relevance has not yet been recognized.
Together, the two attitudes therefore make it possible to preserve both poles of psychic reality: subject and environment.
Neither Closing In Nor Dissolving
Perhaps the functional meaning of the two attitudes can be expressed most concisely as follows:
Extraversion prevents the psyche from closing itself within the world of the subject.
Introversion prevents the subject from dissolving in the world of objects.
The first preserves openness to independent reality.
The second preserves the relation of that reality to the subject.
The first makes it possible to discover something whose significance is still unknown.
The second makes it possible to select from the diversity of the environment what is relevant to the subject.
The first prevents the already existing structure of relevance from becoming the boundary of psychic reality.
The second prevents the inexhaustible diversity of the environment from making selection impossible.
Neither attitude is therefore a more advanced form of the other.
Their difference has an independent significance.
From Jung to the Principle of Psychic Complementarity
Jung recognized in extraversion and introversion two fundamental forms of adaptation and attempted to explain their coexistence through a biological analogy.
This idea retains its importance.
The proposed model, however, makes it possible to ask the question on another level.
One can ask not only:
What life strategy corresponds to each attitude?
One can also ask:
What possibilities of generating psychic content arise through each attitude?
A strikingly symmetrical structure then becomes visible.
The extraverted attitude secures the openness of the psyche to independent reality.
The introverted attitude secures the selection of features in relation to the subject.
Each gains its advantage from the very principle of content formation that simultaneously determines its limitation.
Each leaves outside its own domain forms of content to which the opposite attitude provides access.
The two attitudes therefore do not merely compete with one another, nor do they merely compensate one another.
They complement one another precisely because they remain opposites.
Conclusion
Extraversion and introversion can be understood not only as two general attitude types in Jung’s sense and not only as two biologically rooted strategies of adaptation.
In the proposed model of consciousness, they determine two different ways of forming psychic content.
In the extraverted attitude, the environment is posited as existing independently of the subject. As a result, the psyche remains open to the concrete object, including those of its features whose significance for the subject is still unknown.
In the introverted attitude, the environment is posited as existing for the satisfaction of the subject’s needs. This makes it possible to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant features and to form abstract content by disregarding irrelevant features.
Both attitudes are necessary for the existence of psychic reality within the proposed model.
The psyche must be able to generate content about what the subject was not looking for and whose significance is still unknown.
At the same time, it must be able to select from the inexhaustible diversity of the environment those features that are relevant to the subject.
The existence of two opposite attitudes may therefore be understood as an expression of the principle of psychic complementarity:
Opposite and mutually irreducible ways of generating psychic content are complementary when each makes possible forms of content that, because of the way they are formed, cannot be generated in the opposite way.
Such an understanding allows the role of opposites in the psyche to be viewed differently.
An opposition need not necessarily be a problem that the psyche has to overcome.
On the contrary, opposite attitudes and functions may be necessary precisely because neither can replace the other.
Perhaps it is through this structure that the psyche acquires the capacity to construct a psychic reality in which both of its fundamental poles are preserved simultaneously: subject and environment.
The extraverted attitude prevents the world from becoming only the world of the subject.
The introverted attitude prevents the subject from disappearing into the inexhaustible diversity of the world.
In this sense, the two attitudes are not merely opposite, but psychically complementary.