20. Perceiving and Judging.

In this chapter, I will continue presenting definitions for adaptive-defensive mechanisms.

In the previous chapter, I talked about Introversion and Extraversion. There I presented a few concepts and phrases, which play the role of parts that make up these definitions. I did it so, to make these definitions short enough to fit on the Mandala of Characters.

Among others, for this reason, I use ambiguous terms and phrases to make them speak as much as possible. So we can say that I applied the principle—minimum words, maximum content.

The definitions of Introversion and Extraversion at the moment are as follows.

In this chapter, I will go to the other two adaptive-defensive mechanisms, namely:

• Perceiving (Abstraction),
• Judging (Empathy).

And I will introduce terms and phrases for their short definitions.

Maybe I will start with what we know from previous chapters about Perceiving and Judging.

The terms “Perceiving” and “Judging” are thanks to Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers work. They created their personality typology based on Carl Gustav Jung’s “Psychological Types”. They are best known for the so-called Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, MBTI® for short. This indicator helps us find the type of character we can belong to. For me from this typology the most interesting are terms “Perceiving” and “Judging”, which match to the Mandala of Characters I create.

In Cook Briggs and Briggs Myers typology “Perceiving” and “Judging” form one of the so-called dichotomies. Dichotomies are opposing pair of preferences. Thus, “Perceiving” and “Judging” are one of the four pairs of oppositional preferences. This dichotomy tells us how our life is organized, hat is, what our lifestyle is?

So, according to Cook Briggs and Briggs Myers, we have two lifestyles:

• “Perceiving” is a lifestyle that is flexible, spontaneous, occasional, etc.
• “Judging” is a lifestyle that is systematic, planned, methodical, etc.

The terms “Perceiving” and “Judging” are quite accurate and popular, which is why I decided to use them in the Mandala of Characters.

In the Mandala of Characters, “Perceiving” and “Judging” play the role of the third and fourth adaptive-defensive mechanism. (The first and second mechanisms are Introversion and Extraversion, which were distinguished by Jung).

However, as I said in one of the previous chapters (that is, in chapter “18. Adaptive-defensive mechanisms”), the terms for “Perceiving” and “Judging”, we can also find in Jung’s “Psychological Types” and in the Ancient Typology.

As for Jung, he has been reflecting on two terms, which in my opinion are equivalent of “Perceiving” and “Judging”. These terms in German are called „Einfühlung” and “Abstraktion”, that is “Feeling in” and “Abstraction”.

The term „Einfühlung” was not widely adopted. Instead, popular became its English version, namely, “Empathy”.

Reflections on „Einfühlung” and “Abstraktion” we can find in chapter “VII. The type problem in aesthetics” of his book “Psychological Types”.

Jung in this chapter is based, among others, on the work of:

• German art historian Wilhelm Worringer (author among others of the book “Abstraction and Empathy” („Abstraktion und Einfühlung”).
• And the German philosopher and analytical psychologist Theodor Lipps who acknowledge “Einfühlung”, as an important philosophical and psychological concept.

However, Jung disagreed with the above researches that „Einfühlung” and “Abstraktion” are key concepts. Instead, Jung:

• „Einfühlung” (Feeling in, Empathy) included to—Extraversion.
• “Abstraktion” (Abstraction) included to—Introversion.

In retrospect, however, in my opinion, Jung underestimated „Einfühlung” and “Abstraktion”. I think Wilhelm Worringer and Theodor Lipps were right believing that these are key concepts.

That is why I assumed in my considerations that these concepts are separate reference points, according to which we can orientate ourselves in the world of art and psychology. It means that „Einfühlung” and “Abstraktion” are independent of Introversion and Extraversion.

Confirmation of this can be found in the works mentioned above Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. It means, in my opinion, “Einfühlung” and “Abstraktion” are equivalents of "Perceiving" and "Judging".

In my view, also analogical to these terms are symbolical concepts that we can find in Ancient Typology, namely:
— “dry”, and
— “moist-wet”.

These symbolic terms belong to the so-called Qualities of the Elements, about which we can read in Aristotle’s work “On Generation and Corruption”.

Here, I will remind the table where I compared the Qualities of Aristotle’s theory with adaptive-defensive mechanisms.

I will also remind the diagram with four auxiliary points of our psyche. We can see in this diagram concepts and phrases that in the table above. And also we can see concepts and phrases regarding adaptive-defensive mechanisms, which I have described in previous chapters so far.

In the table above and in the diagram, we can see that:
— “active qualities” (that have “power of action”) are analogical to “energy sources”,
— “susceptible qualities” (that are “suffer action”) are analogical to “lifestyle”.

Earlier, I also associated the “lifestyle” with Aristotle’s theory (it means, with his descriptions of “dry” and “moist-wet” qualities) and I made the following table).

In the creation of the above table, I was obviously guided by the idea that the terms from Aristotle’s theory, we can use in a symbolic sense. The symbolism of these terms and phrases can have many different associations.

For example, we can say that:

• “dry” lifestyle (Perceiving, Abstraction),
  — on the one hand can be hard, rigid, and rough,
  — and on the other hand, can be dry, crispy, and delicate.
• in turn, the “moist-wet” lifestyle (Judging, Empathy, Feeling in),
  — one the one hand can be flexible, elastic, fine, and fluent, — and on the other hand, can be slight, flabby, limp, and small.

From the above reminder of what I wrote earlier about “Perceiving” and “Judging”, we already know a lot about these terms. During the development of the Mandala of Characters, however, I created further terms for these mechanisms.

The first concepts I associated with a question, what Perceiving and Judging are connected with?

And during my thoughts and observations, I came to a conclusion that:

• Perceiving—we can associate with—action and movement,
• Judging—we can associate with—process and act.

So, that first concepts for definitions of Perceiving and Judging will look like this:

Thinking is quite simple here.

Regarding Perceiving:

• to see something we have to be:
  — on the move, or
  — in action, or
  — both on the move and in action.

  We have to be on the move to:
  — have the opportunity to perceive something that interests us;
  — or to keep up with what we are observing or following.

  We have to be in action because:
  — when we are a participant of some action, then we have the opportunity to notice something interesting (some event, something unique, opportunity to catch, etc.),
  — besides, we can create some action ourselves to create opportunities to see something exciting or participate in something interesting.

Regarding Judging:

to judge something, we need:
— process, or
— act, or
— both process and act.

To justify it, we can actually say that:
— during some process, we can create some act,
— and some act, we can judge thanks to some process.
It means, for example, during the creative process, we create an act. Next, we can give in this act to some judging process. And as a result of this judging process, we can assess what value, potential, purpose, destiny, etc. this act has?

Perceiving and Judging we can also link to Aristotle’s theory.

Aristotle said that “dry” and “moist-wet” are “susceptible qualities” that “suffer action”.

In the diagram that we could see earlier:

• “dry” is equivalent of Perceiving,
• and “moist-wet” is equivalent of Judging.

Besides on this diagram, we can see that Judging and Perceiving are “susceptible qualities” that “suffer action”.

Also, as I said before:

• Perceiving we can describe using “movement” and “action”, and
• Judging we can describe using “process” and “act”.

All in all, based on the above assumptions, and using Aristotle’s terms, we can say that:

• movement and action—can “suffer action”, or can be “susceptible” to—Perceiving,
• process and act—can “suffer action” or can be “susceptible” to—Judging.

So, above, I made a logical combination to show that in Aristotle’s theory, we can find confirmation that “movement and action” and “process and act” accurately describe the mechanisms of Perceiving and Judging.

Now, we can ask another question, what attitude should we take in the case of the above two mechanisms? That is, in the case of:

• Judging that involves “process and act”, and
• Perceiving that involves “movement and action”.

I think:

• In the case of “process and act” we need appropriately:
  — plan our process, and
  — organize our act.
  For example, we need to plan the process we are in well. And we need to organize the act of our creation, the way of proceedings, the process of achieving something, the method of accomplishing our work, etc.
  In summary, for some “process and act” we need “planning and organizing”.
• In turn, in the case of “movement and action” we will need:
  — effective finding, and
  — proper dealing with this what we found.
  For example, we need to find a solution to our tasks or problems, And when we found a solution, we need to put it in action.
  In summary, in the case of some “movement and action,” we need “finding and dealing”.

All in all, we have further phrases for the definition of Judging and Perceiving.

I wrote more about the definitions of Judging and Perceiving in update 1.26.

I will also add the above definitions to the diagram of four auxiliary reference points of our psyche.

I think the above diagram can tell us a lot about our adaptive-defensive mechanisms. However, these are not the whole definitions of these mechanisms. In the next chapters, I will add to them more terms that I think are very interesting.

References: