The Inferior Function

A Fount of Frustration and an Opening

Photo by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash

In my last post I wrote about my preference for Jung’s typology system over its adaptation into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). There’s a facet of Jung’s system that isn’t overtly mentioned in the MBTI, but may be present in the background of that system. It’s had tremendous explanatory power in my life and I think more people should know about it. I’m talking about the inferior function.

The Functions and Their Polarities

Jung believed that everyone has the same four functions, four ways of using our consciousness to adapt and orient to the world. As a reminder, they are:

Thinking (Myers-Briggs: T): The process of cognitive thought and logical discrimination. Thinking tells us what something is.¹

Feeling (Myers-Briggs: F): The function of subjective judgement or valuation. Feeling tells us what something is worth to us.² The word “feeling” is being used in a very particular way here. It does not necessarily mean high emotional intelligence or more emotionality.

Sensation (Myers-Briggs: S): The process of perceiving through our physical sense organs—our five senses. Sensation establishes that something exists.³

Intuition (Myers-Briggs: N): A form of perception by way of tuning into the unconscious. Intuition gives us a sense of what can be done with a thing.⁴

This is an abridged recap from my post on the functions two weeks ago. The new piece I’ll add to the system today is that each of the functions is put into a pair with its opposite. Jung divided the four functions into:

The Rational Functions: Thinking ←→ Feeling

The Irrational Functions: Sensation ←→ Intuition

The rational functions are both ways of processing information and making discerning judgements. The irrational functions are more about perceiving the world without sorting or judging the perceptions that are gathered, though the perceptions gathered can eventually be put to that use. This emphasis on “Judging” or “Perceiving” are where the J and the P come from in your Myers-Briggs type, by the way.

Each person has one primary function: one of the four functions that’s their primary way of orienting to the world and getting by. Knowing a function’s opposite is important because whatever a person’s primary function is, its opposite will be their inferior function.

It’s almost as though the pairs of functions are see-saws. The more primary or “higher up” a function is in us, the “further down” or inferior and closer to the unconscious its opposite will be.

A Guided Tour of Inferior Sensation

One’s inferior function is their least refined and least developed function, and it can sometimes be hard to keep an even keel when trying to put it to use. Using it is not impossible, and there may not be obvious sings of struggle when someone is using their inferior function, although they may feel either out of their depth or wildly overconfident. For the sake of psychological balance and wholeness, it’s actually important that our inferior function is not completely neglected in our lives.

I can give you a more tangible sense of what this looks like in my own life. My primary function is Intuition (which is itself weird, fun, and worth writing about down the road). This makes Sensation my inferior function.

Sensation is highly prized and useful for engineers, handymen, scientists, and cooks among many others. Sensation dictates how we perceive and interact with concrete items in the physical world. (I’m probably describing Extraverted Sensation more than Introverted Sensation. For the sake of brevity, I’m going to leave aside that additional layer of complexity for now.)

This perception and interaction with concrete objects can be a challenge or filled with mystery for someone like myself with inferior Sensation. For example, I’m a decent cook, people generally like my food, but my wife gets a kick out of how closely I have to follow recipes.

I’ve learned the hard way that I don’t have the knack in this area to eyeball quantities of ingredients. My Sensation is not refined or reliable enough for that. It takes me three times longer to chop everything than any recipe says it will. I’ll also struggle with whether the pieces I’m chopping are too big or too small, and often try to adjust the size of the pieces a few times before I’m done, defeating the purpose of trying to get everything the same size so they cook evenly. This is the result of second guessing and psyching myself out when putting my Sensation to use—keeping emotion and anxiety at bay when using the inferior function can be challenging.

“Inferior” captures this challenging aspect of the function well, but it may not do justice to the more beautiful and positive aspect of this function closest to the unconscious.

There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

-Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

The inferior function can be thought of as a significant crack through which the light gets in to all of us. It will keep any of us from ever achieving perfection, thus keeping us human.

It’s proximity to the unconscious gives the inferior function a kind of numinous or magical feeling. Despite my struggles, or perhaps because of them, I never feel more accomplished than after sharpening a knife or fixing a toilet myself, even if it takes me three times longer than it should and I need to refer back to a YouTube guide at every step.

Sometimes, the magical feeling associated with the inferior function causes us to vastly overvalue its products. For example, Jung believed that Thinking was Freud’s inferior function and that this was the cause of his need to explain everything in terms the sex drive. On some barely conscious level, Freud’s inferior Thinking gave him the feeling that his theory of libido was a magical explanation for all human behaviour.

I can sense this dynamic in my own fascination with permaculture, and particularly techniques for ecological restoration through topological changes to landscapes. The thought of operating an excavator fills me with dread, yet I’m sometimes filled with conviction that I’ve found the way to bring life back to barren soil. There is likely some truth to this and plenty of legitimate value in permaculture. However, knowing that it’s in the territory of my inferior function helps me notice when I’m getting carried away and keeps me from presenting permaculture as the answer to all ecological and cultural issues (most of the time).

This is the tension of the inferior function. It’s where we’re crude, lacking a sense of proportion, clumsy, and childish. It’s also where we’re childlike and a potential opening for a sense of wonder and mystery to slip back into our lives like the light getting in through Leonard Cohen’s cracked imperfect offering.

1. Sharp, Daryl. 1998. Jungian Psychology Unplugged. Inner City Books. 11.

2. Sharp, Daryl. 1998. Jungian Psychology Unplugged. Inner City Books. 11.

3. Sharp, Daryl. 1998. Jungian Psychology Unplugged. Inner City Books. 11.

4. Sharp, Daryl. 1998. Jungian Psychology Unplugged. Inner City Books. 11.