Carl Jung, who was hated by Zoe Williams’ father (My late father hated Carl Jung. Should I shun him for ever too?, 4 September), is famous for his work on dreams. It’s perhaps less well known that from his long experience of treating others and observing themes and patterns, he developed a personality type theory as well. Isabel Myers and Katharine Briggs turned this into the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a personality test widely used for half a century in educational and business settings.
I’ve seen the MBTI evoke reactions similar to Zoe’s father’s distaste for Jung. It’s not scientifically validated, some people complain; and (less heard these days) a mother and daughter came up with it, round a kitchen table.
Yet type theory predicts quite accurately who will appreciate it and who won’t. There’s a marvellous book by John Giannini called Compass of the Soul, which attempts to bridge the gap between Jungian analysts and MBTI practitioners. It’s a big book, and there’s a big divide. There’s a useful table showing which personality types are likely to be drawn to which schools of therapy. Suffice to say behaviourists are on the opposite side from Jungians.
The MBTI has 16 types (though still not enough nuance for Jungians). For those who prefer a binary, there’s the work of Iain McGilchrist. He shows how the left brain handles labelling, describing and measuring, while the right brain handles mystery, values and complexity – and how the left brain has taken over the world, to dire effect.
I suspect that Zoe’s father led with the left brain, abhorring the idea of ancestral trauma, or meaning in tunnels. McGilchrist says the left brain doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. People tend to fear what they don’t understand, and one way of handling that is to denigrate it. Hence the bared teeth.
Gill Coombs
Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire
• Behaviourism arose as an attempt to find aspects of psychology that could be objectively determined. Depth psychology, of which Jung was an exemplar, produced interesting theories about the mind, but these were subjective and impossible to prove empirically, because mind by its very nature is subjective. Behaviourists took “mind” out of the picture by blurring it out of focus with statistics, or by zooming in with a microscope to the scale of neurons. “Mind” might exist, they held, but it was not a useful concept for scientific study because it could not be objectively observed.
However, human understanding isn’t solely derived from objectivity. Our innate capacities for communication, empathy and introspection can lead us to deep insights into our own and others’ subjective experiences, especially if guided by frameworks like depth psychology. This may be more an art than a science in the strictest sense, but that doesn’t lessen its value. Despite its whiff of mysticism, Jungian therapy has empowered countless individuals to achieve personal growth and transformation.
Ben Whitmore
Raglan, New Zealand
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