Psychological Types: Or, the Psychology of Individuation

Jung's 1921 masterwork introduced the vocabulary we now use to understand ourselves: extravert and introvert. But Psychological Types is far more than a personality quiz. It is Jung's attempt to map the fundamental architecture of human consciousness, proposing that how we perceive and judge the world falls into distinct patterns, each with its own logic and value. Working through ancient mythology, medieval philosophy, Goethe and Schiller's aesthetics, and the competing theories of Freud and Adler, Jung constructs a typological system that argues for the legitimacy of opposing psychological functions. Neither thinking nor feeling, sensation nor intuition, is superior in absolute terms. Each represents a different way of relating to reality. This dense, ambitious work became the theoretical foundation for the Myers-Briggs indicator and nearly every subsequent personality typology. It remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the deeper structures of human difference.