Update 1.33 — Empathy and Abstraction.

In this update, I decided to add two concepts. To add these concepts inspired me the following quote from Carl Gustav Jung’s book “Psychological Types”.

In the above quote, there are two concepts which are very interesting to me, namely, “empathy” and “abstraction”. Jung wrote about these concepts, but ultimately he did not include them in his theory of personalities, that is, into his “Psychological Types”. Personally, I think these concepts are worth more attention.

Before I say more about “abstraction” and “empathy”, I must point out that these concepts in the original Jung’s writing, that is, in German, are as follows:
— „Abstraktion”, that is, “abstraction”, and — „Einfühlung”, that is „feeling into”.

Please note, that the word “empathy” is different from the German original, that is „Einfühlung”, which we can translate as “feeling into”.

The word “empathy” comes from this that in 1909 the American psychologist E. B. Titchener translated „Einfühlung” as empathy. And next with time, “empathy” became a very popular term.

So, in the above quote, Jung says that adaptive-defensive mechanisms include:

• Empathy,
• Abstraction,
• Introversion, and
• Extraversion.

And here is a very interesting thing, because Jung, despite the fact that he distinguished four adaptive-defensive mechanisms, he ultimately focused only on two mechanisms, namely:

• Introversion, and
• Extraversion.

As for:

• Empathy, and
• Abstraction,

Jung ultimately did not use these two mechanisms for his typology—“Psychological Types”.

Instead, Jung:

• “Empathy” considered as a similar to “Extraversion”, and
• “Abstraction” as a similar to “Introversion”.

These considerations we can find in chapter “VII. The type problem in aesthetics” of his book “Psychological Types”.

Jung in this chapter 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.

As for the terms “Abstraktion” and “Einfühlung”, the term “Einfühlung” is particularly interesting.

The creator of “Einfühlung” is Robert Vischer, who used this word in aesthetics. This term meant a process where one’s own sensitivity is transferred to a given object. So, the term expresses the “feeling into” or “entering into the spirit of” something. For example, the artist can “feel into”, that is, emphasize, with his creation. Thanks to this, he transfers his sensitivity to the work he creates. The effect of this can be that a given work can emanate, for example, a state of mind, emotions, various mental states, a specific atmosphere, etc.

Later the term “Einfühlung” also used the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey. He used this term as — ability to emphasize (or feel into) with other people.

Thus, “Einfühlung” become a term used in psychology and aesthetic (or art).

In psychology, however, the English version of “Einfühlung”, that is, “empathy” become more popular.

In aesthetics, in turn, an example of “Einfühlung” according to the above-mentioned—Wilhelm Worringer is:
— synthetism (an art movement initiated by Paul Gauguin),
— expressivism (to this art movement we may include Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh).

In turn, to the second term mentioned above, namely, “abstraction” we can associate with the art movement:
— abstractionism.

The precursors of this movement are Wassily Kandinsky and Edward Munch.

When it comes to abstraction in psychology, it involves abstracting. It means:
— among some elements, distinguishing, what makes them different.
— and highlighting elements, which have something in common.

Such elements can be information, traits of something or someone, concepts, ideas, problems, matters, etc.

For example, if we are dealing with someone’s characteristics:
— we distinguish traits that are different from ours,
— and we distinguish traits which have something in common with our traits (or with traits we have previously distinguished in others).

So, it is the opposite process to empathy, because we empathize with someone to discover:
— what connects us with each other,
— or what makes us different.

Thanks to the Mandala of Characters, we can also say that:

• • in the process of Empathy are involved in mainly two basic functions, that is:
  — Intuition, and
  — Feeling.
• • and in the process of Abstraction are involved in mainly the next two functions, that is:
  — Thinking, and
  — Sensation.

As I mentioned above, Jung connected:
— Empathy with Extraversion, and
— Abstraction with Introversion.

In retrospect, however, I think that Jung underestimated Empathy and Abstraction, namely, in German “Einfühlung” and “Abstraktion”.

I think that here we should agree with the researches whom Jung mentioned in his considerations about “Einfühlung” and “Abstraktion”, that is, with:
— Wilhelm Worringer, who wrote about the significance of abstraction and empathy in aesthetics,
— And Theodor Lipps, who wrote about the significance of empathy in philosophy and psychology.

In my opinion, these researches were right, believing that these are key concepts.

However, Jung assumed that there are two main adaptive-defensive mechanisms.

In the Mandala of Characters, I assumed that there are four mechanisms, not two. So, abstraction and empathy are “parts” that are very useful for me.

However, Jung assumed that there are two main adaptive-defensive mechanisms.

In the Mandala of Characters, I assumed that there are four mechanisms, not two. So,
— abstraction
— and empathy
are “parts” that are very useful for me.

My assumption that there are four mechanisms, not two, was based on inspiration from Ancient Typology and other factors.

So, one of the factors leading me to the fact that there is a third and fourth adaptive-defensive mechanism appeared later in the works of Katharine Cook Briggs, and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers. Although, these mechanisms are named differently by these personality researches, however, they are nevertheless. It means these two mechanisms are described as—preferences. And these two preferences are:
— Perceiving, and
— Judging.

Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers were one of the most famous continuators of Jung’s work on personalities. They also greatly contributed to the popularization of Jung’s ideas. They are the most known from Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, MBTI® for short. It is one of the most popular indicators of personality. It is important here that it is the indicator, not a test. The word “test”, among others, is somewhat stressful because of the result of the test. While personality, according to the above researchers, is a gift worth understanding to be able to use this gift in the best possible way. So, it is better to indicate personality than testing it.

I personally agree with this assumption, and I think it is very important.

Returning to the terms “Perceiving” and “Judging”, they become popular. Besides, they are also very relevant. That is why I decided to use them in the Mandala of Characters.

As I mentioned above, I think that these terms are analogous to the mentioned above, Empathy and Abstraction. It means:
— the equivalent of “Empathy” is the concept of “Judging,
— and the equivalent of “Abstraction” is the concept of “Perceiving”.

For greater clarity, I will put the above terms in the table.

(I used this table earlier in update 1.22, where I wrote about areas of basic psychological functions and adaptive-defensive mechanisms).

So, in general, I decided to make a synthesis:
— Jung’’s “Psychological Types”, and
— Cook Briggs and Briggs Myers typology.

I present this synthesis in the table below. In this table, I also placed the basic psychological functions.

My synthesis here is that:

• from Jung’s Psychological Types I used the division into:
  — basic psychological functions (Intuition, Sensation, Thinking, and Feeling),
  — and adaptive-defensive mechanisms (Introversion and Extraversion).
• and from Cook Briggs and Briggs Myers typology I took two so-called preferences, namely,
  — Perceiving, and
  — Judging,

and I treated them as two adaptive-defensive mechanisms, that is, as equivalents to the above-mentioned “Abstraction” and “Empathy”.

So on the Mandala of Characters we have:

• four basic psychological functions:
  — Intuition,
  — Sensation,
  — Thinking, and
  — Feeling,
• and four adaptive-defensive mechanisms:
  — Introversion,
  — Extraversion,
  — Perceiving (or Abstraction) and
  — Judging (or Empathy).

In the diagram below, I present how the above functions and mechanisms are arranged on the Mandala of Characters.

In the above diagram, I also put Jung’s terms regarding “Perceiving” and “Judging”, which Jung considered but did not treat them as separate mechanisms. It means:
— “Abstraction”—which is the equivalent of “Perceiving”,
— “Empathy”—which is the equivalent of “Judging”.

In the Mandala of Characters, the above division, which we can see in the table above, has an additional very interesting explanation. It turns out that the above division can be associated with the division that occurs in the Ancient System. It means:

• Basic psychological functions (Thinking, Feeling, Intuition and Sensation), correspond to the basic elements. That is, Fire, Water, Air and Earth.
• Adaptive-defensive mechanisms (Extraversion, Introversion, Perceiving, and Judging), correspond to the qualities of the main Elements. That is, hot, cold-cool, dry, and moist-wet.

For greater clarity, I put on the table the above comparison of the Ancient System with Jung’s typology (along with two preferences from the Myers-Briggs typology).

It follows that the psychological concepts which are taken from Jung’s “Psychological Types” and Cook Briggs and Briggs Myers typology correspond with the symbolic concepts used in Ancient System.

In the diagram below, I show how are arranged the above functions and mechanisms, and the main Elements and their qualities.

In the diagram above, I would like to point out that:
— “Empathy”—accompanies “Judging”.
— and “Abstraction”—accompanies “Perceiving”.

So, in these places, we will find “Empathy” and “Abstraction”, that is, two concepts that I added in this update to the Mandala of Characters.

Bibliografia: