Friday, February 29th, 2008
Carl Jung’s book Personality Types contains all the basic concepts that underlie the personality classifications for introverts and extroverts. Jung gives new and old examples from many fields to support his theory that every person tends towards either extroversion or introversion and that these two types perceive the world in radically different ways. The extrovert experiences themselves through the objects in the world while the introvert experience themselves through their own inner life.
I have a clear picture in my mind of these types after reading this book and recently I find evidence everywhere bearing witness to their existence. For instance I just read an essay by Hans Richter where he describes a form of documentary film he tends towards - Film Essays. Describing them, he says:
"In its effort to make visible the the invisible world of imaginations, thoughts, and ideas the essayistic film can tap into an incomparably larger reservoir of expressive means than the pure documentary film. One is not bound in the film essay to the representation of external appearances or to a chronological sequence. On the contrary, one must pull together the material for view from everywhere and for this reason one can jump throughout space and time: for example from the objective representation to the fantastic allegory and from here to an acted out scene."
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Sunday, February 24th, 2008
I spent all weekend looking at the I Ching. This isn’t the first time I’ve dabbled with it and it probably won’t be the last.
Although the interpretations have always seemed vague and rather outdated, I’m very attracted to the idea that these binary (On-Off, Yin-Yang) patterns underlie both things and concepts.
I’m working with a light weight book from the library called something like I-Ching Birthdays. Based on the numerology of the birthdate, a hexagram is built that is supposed to represent one’s basic personality. I did mine and many other peoples who I know fairly well and found the results accurate but not all inclusive. That’s just what I’d expect from a system based just on the birth date. The advantage is that unlike astrology you don’t need the location of birth and exact time of birth - data that’s often hard to locate. As such I could also do famous people like C.G. Jung - just by knowing his birthdate.
Speaking of which, this whole renewed interest of mine in the I-Ching was brought on by a recent obsession with Carl Jung. I’m almost done with his “Personality Types” and “Answer to Job” both amazing books. Personality Types is the groundwork for the Meyers Briggs Personality system and reveals so much that is helpful to an introvert like me. I suddenly “get” where the many extroverts who I’ve never understood and who don’t understand me are coming from. I see how I come across to an extrovert - something really hard to do unless someone else walks you through it.
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