My initiation into Jung’s opus began as a rich personal experience with Jungian analysis in which I discovered that the unconscious offers much aid and guidance for personal growth. In reading Jung’s work, I gleaned that his psychological types are far more than merely orientations to consciousness. They are also essential elements of the transformative process Jung called “individuation”—the coming to birth of unique personality. I read further in the Collected Works, volume by volume, to learn more. I was in search of what seemed almost a well-kept secret: How were the types related to individuation and the larger context of depth psychology? 

Finally I found the answer in the volume I had postponed because of its intimidating title: Mysterium Coniunctionis. After my long arduous ascent to the summit of Mysterium, I returned to my base camp, Jung’s Volume VI, Psychological Types, and was surprised to discover that the answer had been lounging there all along. 

I learned that type dispositions are present in the unconscious to the very depths of the archetypes. Like the oppositions of depth psychology, types form oppositions between conscious and unconscious dispositions that engender individuation. It is in integrating and uniting the opposites that the full expression of the greater personality occurs. For a person to become “whole,” to individuate, to fully express unique personality over time, all eight of Jung’s types are required. 

But a key question remained: How could Jung’s type model be illustrated in graphic form to represent all of this?  Jung had referred to the types as a “compass.” That proved a fertile place to start. The compass could be configured as a mandala—a universal symbol for wholeness and for the Self, Jung’s central archetype. The conscious and unconscious type oppositions, so essential to the process of individuation, could also be readily depicted on a compass.  

We also wanted the labels on the compass to be readily understandable. Each of the eight type orientations includes an array of aptitudes that we termed “gifts.” The name for each gift set could also be illustrated in terms common to everyone. For example, Jung’s “introverted intuition,” could become the Visionary Gifts. His “extraverted thinking” could become the Constructive Gifts.

To fully understand the types, we built a table with five categories to meticulously consider the attributes of each of the types individually. In that pursuit, we uncovered many important insights about the types, their new functional roles, their collaborations, and their oppositions. I wrote Jung’s Indispensable Compass to explain many of the insights, to review Jung’s original eight types, and to array the types—their dispositions, oppositions, and collaborations—on a compass.

With Jung, our focus is on the unique individual: 

“I am neither spurred on by excessive optimism nor in love with high ideals, but am merely concerned with the fate of the individual human being—that infinitesimal unit on whom a world depends, and in whom, if we read the meaning of the Christian message aright, even God seeks his goal.” –C. G. Jung

James Johnston