Post by Admin on Aug 8, 2020 11:14:51 GMT
The Extraverted Sensation Type
No other human type can equal the extraverted sensation type in realism. His sense for objective facts is extraordinarily developed. His life is an accumulation of actual experiences of concrete objects, and the more pronounced his type, the less use does he make of his experience. In certain cases the events in his life hardly deserve the name "experience" at all. What he experiences serves at most as a guide to fresh sensations; anything new that comes within his range of interest is acquired by way of sensation and has to serve its ends. Since one is inclined to regard a highly developed reality-sense as a sign of rationality, such people will be esteemed as very rational. But in actual fact this is not the case, since they are just as much at the mercy of their sensations in the face of irrational, chance happenings as they are in the face of rational ones. This type—the majority appear to be men—naturally does not think he is at the "mercy" of sensation. He would ridicule this view as quite beside the point, because sensation for him is a concrete expression of life-it is simply real life lived to the full. His whole aim is concrete enjoyment, and his morality is oriented accordingly. Indeed, true enjoyment has its own special morality, its own moderation and lawfulness, its own unselfishness and willingness to make sacrifices. It by no means follows that he is just sensual or gross, for he may differentiate his sensation to the finest pitch of aesthetic purity without ever deviating from his principle of concrete sensation however abstract his sensations may be. Wulfen's Der Genussmensch: ein Cicerone im rücksichtslosen Lebensgenuss is the unvarnished confession of a type of this sort, and the book seems to me worth reading on that account alone.
On the lower levels, this type is the lover of tangible reality, with little inclination for reflection and no desire to dominate. To feel the object, to have sensations and if possible enjoy them—that is his constant aim. He is by no means unlovable; on the contrary, his lively capacity for enjoyment makes him very good company; he is usually a jolly fellow, and sometimes a refined aesthete. In the former case the great problems of life hang on a good or indifferent dinner; in the latter, it's all a question of good taste. Once an object has given him a sensation, nothing more remains to be said or done about it. It cannot be anything except concrete and real; conjectures that go beyond the concrete are admitted only on condition that they enhance sensation. The intensification does not necessarily have to be pleasurable, for this type need not be a common voluptuary; he is merely desirous of the strongest sensations, and these, by his very nature, he can receive only from outside. What comes from inside seems to him morbid and suspect. He always reduces his thoughts and feelings to objective causes, to influences emanating from objects, quite unperturbed by the most glaring violations of logic. Once he can get back to tangible reality in any form he can breathe again. In this respect he is surprisingly credulous. He will unhesitatingly connect a psychogenic symptom with a drop in the barometer, while on the other hand the existence of a psychic conflict seems to him morbid imagination. His love is unquestionably rooted in the physical attractions of its object. If normal, he is conspicuously well adjusted to reality. That is his ideal, and it even makes him considerate of others. As he has no ideals connected with ideas, he has no reason to act in any way contrary to the reality of things as they are. This manifests itself in all the externals of his life. He dresses well, as befits the occasion; he keeps a good table with plenty of drink for his friends, making them feel very grand, or at least giving them to understand that his refined taste entitles him to make a few demands of them. He may even convince them that certain sacrifices are decidedly worth while for the sake of style.
The more sensation predominates, however, so that the subject disappears behind the sensation, the less agreeable does this type become. He develops into a crude pleasure-seeker, or else degenerates into an unscrupulous, effete aesthete. Although the object has become quite indispensable to him, yet, as something existing in its own right, it is none the less devalued. It is ruthlessly exploited and squeezed dry, since now its sole use is to stimulate sensation. The bondage to the object is carried to the extreme limit. In consequence, the unconscious is forced out of its compensatory role into open opposition. Above all, the repressed intuitions begin to assert themselves in the form of projections. The wildest suspicions arise; if the object is a sexual one, jealous fantasies and anxiety states gain the upper hand. More acute cases develop every sort of phobia, and, in particular, compulsion symptoms. The pathological contents have a markedly unreal character, with a frequent moral or religious streak. A pettifogging captiousness follows, or a grotesquely punctilious morality combined with primitive, "magical" superstitions that fall back on abstruse rites. All these things have their source in the repressed inferior functions which have been driven into harsh opposition to the conscious attitude, and they appear in a guise that is all the more striking because they rest on the most absurd assumptions, in complete contrast to the conscious sense of reality. The whole structure of thought and feeling seems, in this second personality, to be twisted into a pathological parody: reason turns into hair-splitting pedantry, morality into dreary moralizing and blatant Pharisaism, religion into ridiculous superstition, and intuition, the noblest gift of man, into meddlesome officiousness, poking into every corner; instead of gazing into the far distance, it descends to the lowest level of human meanness.
The specifically compulsive character of the neurotic symptoms is the unconscious counterpart of the easy-going attitude of the pure sensation type, who, from the standpoint of rational judgment, accepts indiscriminately everything that happens. Although this does not by any means imply an absolute lawlessness and lack of restraint, it nevertheless deprives him of the essential restraining power of judgment. But rational judgment is a conscious coercion which the rational type appears to impose on himself of his own free will. This coercion overtakes the sensation type from the unconscious, in the form of compulsion. Moreover, the very existence of a judgment means that the rational type's relation to the object will never become an absolute tie, as it is in the case of the sensation type. When his attitude attains an abnormal degree of one-sidedness, therefore, he is in danger of being overpowered by the unconscious in the same measure as he is consciously in the grip of the object. If he should become neurotic, it is much harder to treat him by rational means because the functions which the analyst must turn to are in a relatively undifferentiated state, and little or no reliance can be placed on them. Special techniques for bringing emotional pressure to bear are often needed in order to make him at all conscious.
No other human type can equal the extraverted sensation type in realism. His sense for objective facts is extraordinarily developed. His life is an accumulation of actual experiences of concrete objects, and the more pronounced his type, the less use does he make of his experience. In certain cases the events in his life hardly deserve the name "experience" at all. What he experiences serves at most as a guide to fresh sensations; anything new that comes within his range of interest is acquired by way of sensation and has to serve its ends. Since one is inclined to regard a highly developed reality-sense as a sign of rationality, such people will be esteemed as very rational. But in actual fact this is not the case, since they are just as much at the mercy of their sensations in the face of irrational, chance happenings as they are in the face of rational ones. This type—the majority appear to be men—naturally does not think he is at the "mercy" of sensation. He would ridicule this view as quite beside the point, because sensation for him is a concrete expression of life-it is simply real life lived to the full. His whole aim is concrete enjoyment, and his morality is oriented accordingly. Indeed, true enjoyment has its own special morality, its own moderation and lawfulness, its own unselfishness and willingness to make sacrifices. It by no means follows that he is just sensual or gross, for he may differentiate his sensation to the finest pitch of aesthetic purity without ever deviating from his principle of concrete sensation however abstract his sensations may be. Wulfen's Der Genussmensch: ein Cicerone im rücksichtslosen Lebensgenuss is the unvarnished confession of a type of this sort, and the book seems to me worth reading on that account alone.
On the lower levels, this type is the lover of tangible reality, with little inclination for reflection and no desire to dominate. To feel the object, to have sensations and if possible enjoy them—that is his constant aim. He is by no means unlovable; on the contrary, his lively capacity for enjoyment makes him very good company; he is usually a jolly fellow, and sometimes a refined aesthete. In the former case the great problems of life hang on a good or indifferent dinner; in the latter, it's all a question of good taste. Once an object has given him a sensation, nothing more remains to be said or done about it. It cannot be anything except concrete and real; conjectures that go beyond the concrete are admitted only on condition that they enhance sensation. The intensification does not necessarily have to be pleasurable, for this type need not be a common voluptuary; he is merely desirous of the strongest sensations, and these, by his very nature, he can receive only from outside. What comes from inside seems to him morbid and suspect. He always reduces his thoughts and feelings to objective causes, to influences emanating from objects, quite unperturbed by the most glaring violations of logic. Once he can get back to tangible reality in any form he can breathe again. In this respect he is surprisingly credulous. He will unhesitatingly connect a psychogenic symptom with a drop in the barometer, while on the other hand the existence of a psychic conflict seems to him morbid imagination. His love is unquestionably rooted in the physical attractions of its object. If normal, he is conspicuously well adjusted to reality. That is his ideal, and it even makes him considerate of others. As he has no ideals connected with ideas, he has no reason to act in any way contrary to the reality of things as they are. This manifests itself in all the externals of his life. He dresses well, as befits the occasion; he keeps a good table with plenty of drink for his friends, making them feel very grand, or at least giving them to understand that his refined taste entitles him to make a few demands of them. He may even convince them that certain sacrifices are decidedly worth while for the sake of style.
The more sensation predominates, however, so that the subject disappears behind the sensation, the less agreeable does this type become. He develops into a crude pleasure-seeker, or else degenerates into an unscrupulous, effete aesthete. Although the object has become quite indispensable to him, yet, as something existing in its own right, it is none the less devalued. It is ruthlessly exploited and squeezed dry, since now its sole use is to stimulate sensation. The bondage to the object is carried to the extreme limit. In consequence, the unconscious is forced out of its compensatory role into open opposition. Above all, the repressed intuitions begin to assert themselves in the form of projections. The wildest suspicions arise; if the object is a sexual one, jealous fantasies and anxiety states gain the upper hand. More acute cases develop every sort of phobia, and, in particular, compulsion symptoms. The pathological contents have a markedly unreal character, with a frequent moral or religious streak. A pettifogging captiousness follows, or a grotesquely punctilious morality combined with primitive, "magical" superstitions that fall back on abstruse rites. All these things have their source in the repressed inferior functions which have been driven into harsh opposition to the conscious attitude, and they appear in a guise that is all the more striking because they rest on the most absurd assumptions, in complete contrast to the conscious sense of reality. The whole structure of thought and feeling seems, in this second personality, to be twisted into a pathological parody: reason turns into hair-splitting pedantry, morality into dreary moralizing and blatant Pharisaism, religion into ridiculous superstition, and intuition, the noblest gift of man, into meddlesome officiousness, poking into every corner; instead of gazing into the far distance, it descends to the lowest level of human meanness.
The specifically compulsive character of the neurotic symptoms is the unconscious counterpart of the easy-going attitude of the pure sensation type, who, from the standpoint of rational judgment, accepts indiscriminately everything that happens. Although this does not by any means imply an absolute lawlessness and lack of restraint, it nevertheless deprives him of the essential restraining power of judgment. But rational judgment is a conscious coercion which the rational type appears to impose on himself of his own free will. This coercion overtakes the sensation type from the unconscious, in the form of compulsion. Moreover, the very existence of a judgment means that the rational type's relation to the object will never become an absolute tie, as it is in the case of the sensation type. When his attitude attains an abnormal degree of one-sidedness, therefore, he is in danger of being overpowered by the unconscious in the same measure as he is consciously in the grip of the object. If he should become neurotic, it is much harder to treat him by rational means because the functions which the analyst must turn to are in a relatively undifferentiated state, and little or no reliance can be placed on them. Special techniques for bringing emotional pressure to bear are often needed in order to make him at all conscious.