The Dimensions of Human Space
Personality Type,
Organizational Form,
and
the Structure of
Human Consciousness

Our
Interest

Over the years we have had an abiding interest in how human consciousness is structured - an interest in the 'dimensions' of its fundamental 'form', as it were.

We have also been intrigued by the profound differences that exist between individuals as a result of varying degrees of emphasis they put on competing aspects of its basic structure.

And, finally, we have striven to comprehend how such individual preferences, commonly associated with what is sometimes called 'personality type', manifest in differences in the level of comfort that individuals of various kinds exhibit toward alternate forms of social organization.


Our
Purpose

On this web page it is our intention to make accessible some of the papers that we have written on these topics. They are not intended as a complete or comprehensive presentation of the larger body of work from which they have been selected. And although they are consistent with it and suggestive of it, they were written to stand alone as self-contained contributions.

Our interest in presenting these papers is not merely, or even primarily, 'theoretical' in nature. We are, to tell the truth, deeply concerned about how SOCIAL interactions have typically been structured in our society. Troubled about the kinds of organizational forms that have gained prominence, and the limitations that they impose on the progress of human social evolution, we have sought to understand what might bring about constructive change.


Jungian
Typologies

We have limited the scope of these particular essays to Jung's personality typology and its derivatives. This should not be taken as an endorsement of these systems. Although we have a deep appreciation for them, we also believe that the work of others, too numerous to mention, are equally significant, and often insightful in ways that the Jungian typologies cannot hope to match. Adorno's work, for instance, on the 'authoritarian' personality, may in the end shed more light on issues critical to effecting positive social change than can be directly gleened from the Jungian typologies.

Why, then, have we chosen the Jungian typologies to work with in this context? For two reasons, mainly. First, the MBTI® (a Jungian off-shoot) has generated a substantial body of demographic information that promises to be helpful in discerning large-scale patterns that could shed light on the impact that personality type has on the form that organizations take. These typologies also provide a widely accepted shared language with which to talk about these issues. Secondly, Jung's theory of the four functions, on which the MBTI is based, provides a helpful starting place for broaching the question of the fundamental structure of consciousness in a philosophically meaningful way. It is in Jung's theory of the 'psychological types', therefore, that our outer social concerns have intersected in an intriguing way with our inner psychological and spiritual interests.

The Papers Contained in this Volume:

 
O
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Form



Toward A Diversity of Psychological Type in Organization - John Fudjack and Patricia Dinkelaker, October 1994.

What light can personality typologies shed on the kind of organizational 'forms' that are typically utilized in our society? Are they the product of personality type? What kind of organizational forms would develop if undervalued personality types were honored?

This paper was originally presented at the First Annual Antioch University Management Faculty Conference, in October of 1994.

  • Part One

    - Promoting diversity in the workplace - an issue of increasing importance. The need to expand the definition of 'diversity' to include 'psychological (i.e., personality) type'.

  • Part Two

    - A review of Jung's theory of psychological type. [It is in this section that we first expressed a concern about the dual purpose that the 'J/P' designation is made to carry in the MBTI - a subject that we address in greater detail below, in a critique of the MBTI.]

  • Part Three

    - How are personality types distributed in the population at large? Which types predominate, and what is the social impact of this?

    The single largest group, the 'ESTJ', can be thought of as a cultural protoype in our society, where an extraverted, 'rational-empirical', and pragmatic approach is generally favored. Demographic evidence suggests that the ESTJ's influence is even further amplifiedin the corporate sphere - where the concentration of ESTJs increases dramatically as one moves up the corporate ladder. The INFP, as a polar opposite to the ESTJ, tends to carry its 'shadow'. This makes the INFP, and other types that share 'I', 'N', 'F' or 'P' tendencies, more vulnerable to organizational scapegoating.

  • Part Four

    Mitroff's work suggests that the dominance of 'ST' types in our society leads to a preference for what is technically known as 'bureaucracy' in Organizational Development (O.D.) literature. What are the drawbacks associated with this particular form? Inhibited creativity and a diminished capacity for effective interpersonal communication characterize bureaucratic structures.

    Would alternate types of organizational form encourage 'shadow types' to speak their truths? A compensatory 'new paradigm' has arisen in the O.D. field. It more profoundly embraces and embodies the mental functions that are undervalued and under-represented in the bureaucratic organizations typical of the 'ESTJ' mentality - Feeling and iNtuition. The new paradigm strongly suggests that there is an urgent need to re-consider what organizational forms we use for structuring our workplaces if we want to optimize the organization's capacity to respond creatively to crisis situations and to fully utilize the skills distributed amongst individual members of the organization.


D
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of the Mind


Jungian Personality Typology and the Dimensions of Human Consciousness, John Fudjack - January, 1998.
In this piece, Jung's 'four mental functions' are revisited.

Underwriting Jung's 'Theory of Types', and ultimately the MBTI, is his concept of the 'four mental functions' - Feeling, Thinking, iNtuition, and Sensing. Here a fresh start is made at re-describing them, in a way that would reveal some of their more profound aspects. The material is presented in a manner consistent with the way in which Jung had originally intended the 'functions' to be understood. He conceived of each as an independent 'dimension' of the human mind; together they create a four-dimensional space in which all forms of human experience abide - not unlike the way in which the four 'dimensions' of the physical world describe the 'space' in which all phenomenal events occur. The emphasis in this piece is on understanding 'iNtuition', one of the culturally undervalued functions.


The
Four
Functions

Five Levels of the Four Jungian 'Functions', John Fudjack and Patricia Dinkelaker - June, 1998

This piece presents the view that five 'developmental levels' can be discerned for each of the four Jungian functions. First, in a brief overview of the theory, five levels of development are delineated for each of the four functions. Then we turn our attention to a more in-depth analysis of one of the most undervalued and least understood of the functions - feeling. A phenomenological account is given of the five levels of the feeling function. This is followed by a review of a wide variety of 'theories of emotion' that have been generated in experimental psychology and philosophy of mind over the past hundred years. The seemingly divergent and sometimes contradictory assertions made by rival theories are reconciled when each is seen as speaking from different vantage point associated with one of the five levels of development.

Although the MBTI is founded on the concept of 'the Four Functions', MBTI theorists have not typically sought to more deeply explore the nature of each function and its relationship to the others. They have only recently begun to develop a rudimentary 'developmental' approach to the functions, similar to the one that has been utilized for years by Jungian analysts such as Von Franz. It was she who first saw the wisdom in distinguishing between an 'inferior' and 'developed' manifestation of each function.

For the web reader, this paper has been divided into sections that can be easily loaded separately:

  1. Introduction - the Need for a Developmental Theory

  2. A Brief Summary of the Five Level Theory

  3. A Phenomenological Description of the Five Levels of the Feeling Function

  4. An In-Depth Look at 'Theories of Emotion':

  5. Some Cross-functional Observations About Each 'Level'


The
MBTI®

Critiquing the MBTI , John Fudjack and Patricia Dinkelaker - July, 1998.

We identify three questionable MBTI premises and demonstrate how, if one were to make alternate assumptions in each of these three critical areas, a number of new 'non-traditional' personality types could be identified. This approach provides an intriguing perspective from which it can be argued that the MBTI sometimes, in effect, 'mistypes' individuals - although not in any trivial sense of the word.

The MBTI's failure to distinguish these alternate personality categories may ultimately lead to misleading results in empirical studies designed to compare the MBTI with other personality typologies. Although we do not specifically address this issue in the present article, we intend to focus on it elsewhere.

JavaScript
Application

An Interactive Javascript Tool for Exploring Typological Space

We wrote this computer application to make it easy for interested parties to explore the complex relationships that exist

  1. between specific personality types (e.g., the INFP and the ISTJ); and

  2. between two alternate typologies (the MBTI and the Enneagram).

Each MBTI type can be thought of as a 'variant' of every other MBTI type, according to a set of fairly complex but consistent rules that define their relationship. This Javascript tool helps the user to appreciate which types are morphologically closer to each other and which are more distant relatives. It can be used to trace an almost infinite number of paths through typological space by morphing from one variant to another.

It also assists the user in comparing specific Enneagram types to specific MBTI types, so that theories about how MBTI and Enneagram types correlate may more easily be explored and evaluated.

For a more detailed explanation, and a description of how our theory about the 'five levels of the four functions' is utilized in this application, click the 'explanation' button at the top right-hand corner of the tool's top frame.

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A 'PDF' version of this website is being prepared for off-line viewing. . If you are interested in downloading a free copy of the PDF file when it is ready, or have comments, suggestions, or questions, email us by clicking HERE.

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