hand, do not engage with the environment with the purpose of changing or controlling it so much as to explore and engage with the sensations and possibilities of what is already there. These explorations of P’s have a tendency to challenge and conflict with the order and control that J’s are seeking to establish, which is why the Judging/Perceiving distinction can be enlightening. However, as we will shortly see, this distinction, too, is somewhat sloppy, since everyone has an outward-oriented judging function and an outward-oriented perceiving function in the healthy range of their stack, and so will frequently display characteristics of both judgers and perceivers.
We get into real and consistent, categorical differences between types only when we start talking about the specific types of functions in an individual’s “stack,” and the particular position in the stack that each function occupies. There are eight distinct functions, and eight positions in a functional stack. However, of these eight positions, only four are considered to be in a personality’s ego-syntonic range; that is to say, only four represent healthy, constructive, and normal behavior for that type. The other four functions are said to have been rejected by the individual, pushed into the ego-dystonic range, and are called the shadow functions*. These functions are generally displayed by the individual only when under significant psychological stress. A far cry from the patterns of behavior and information processing in which the individual has established his or her identity and self-worth, the “shadow” functions are used only as a last resort to restore psychological balance when the healthy functions have failed, and so represent frustrated, defensive, and/or destructive behavior for that type. Thus, a categorical, rather than continuous, distinction exists between types when one type has rejected a function that is integral to the identity of another type.
As was mentioned earlier, there are eight cognitive functions, consisting of the extraverted and introverted orientations of Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, and iNtuition. The shorthand for each of these functions consists of a capital letter corresponding to the type of function (T, F, S, or N) and a little letter corresponding to its extraverted or introverted orientation (e or i). Thus, the eight functions can be written as Te, Ti, Fe, Fi, Se, Si, Ne, and Ni, and stand for extraverted thinking, introverted thinking, extraverted feeling, introverted feeling, extraverted sensing, introverted sensing, extraverted intuition, and introverted intuition, respectively.
Now we are ready to define these eight functions, and hopefully it will be easier to follow since we’ll be piecing together terms that have already come up.
-B.T.
The
Cognitive
Functions:
Theory,
Characteristics,
Derivations
by Bee Tilbump