Carl Gustav Jung

Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of analytical psychology. He worked at the Burghölzli hospital in Zürich and collaborated with Sigmund Freud before their break in 1913.

His interests reached well beyond personality types: dreams, symbols, religion and the relationship between conscious and unconscious experience. In his framework, “individuation” concerns becoming more fully oneself; it is not a score or a four-letter destination.

1. 1875

   Born in Switzerland

2. 1913

   Break with Freud

3. 1921

   Psychological Types published in German

4. 1961

   Dies in Küsnacht, Switzerland

In Psychological Types, Jung distinguished a person’s general attitude from the psychological functions through which experience is perceived or judged. These are terms within his theory, not measurements of brain activity. [2]

Two directions of orientation

Extraversion

An orientation that gives greater weight to the external object and objective circumstances.

Introversion

An orientation that gives greater weight to the subjective factor: how experience is taken up within the person.

Four psychological functions

Sensation

Perception through the senses: attending to what is concretely present.

Intuition

Perception of possibilities and connections not immediately given to the senses.

Thinking

Judging through conceptual connections and logical conclusions.

Feeling

Judging through valuation: accepting or rejecting something according to its value, rather than simply having an emotion.

Jung described each function in both attitudes, yielding eight principal type descriptions—not the later 16 four-letter combinations. In Chapter X, “The Principal and Auxiliary Functions,” he also cautioned that the pure types he described do not occur frequently in practice. [2]

Related ideas, different projects. This is a history of influence and adaptation, not a chain of endorsements.

1. 01

   Jung · A theory

   The 1921 book describes attitudes and functions as a framework for interpreting psychological differences. It is not an online test. [2]

2. 02

   Myers & Briggs · MBTI

   Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers developed the MBTI from Jung’s work. Their framework uses four preference pairs, including J–P, and 16 four-letter combinations. That is a later extension, not Jung’s original questionnaire. [3] [4]

3. 03

   Open Psychometrics · OEJTS

   The Open Extended Jungian Type Scales were developed as an alternative questionnaire, with items selected to distinguish self-identified types. That development history does not validate every later adaptation. [4]

4. 04

   OpenJung · An independent adaptation

   Our full test adapts the 32-item OEJTS 1.2. OpenJung is not the official MBTI assessment and is not affiliated with or endorsed by a Jung institute or the Myers & Briggs Foundation.

These sources support the specific historical and theoretical points noted below. They are not validation studies of OpenJung.

1. [1] The Society of Analytical Psychology · About Carl Jung

   Biography, the 1913 break with Freud, and the wider scope of analytical psychology and individuation.

2. [2] C. G. Jung · Psychological Types (1921), Chapter X

   Primary text in H. Godwyn Baynes’s 1923 English translation, hosted by York University. See the introduction, the extraverted and introverted function sections, and “The Principal and Auxiliary Functions.”

3. [3] Myers & Briggs Foundation · The Preferences: E–I, S–N, T–F, J–P

   Definitions used in the later Myers–Briggs framework, especially the fourth pair, Judging–Perceiving. Used for terminology, not as evidence of this site’s validity.

4. [4] Open Psychometrics · Development of the Open Extended Jungian Type Scales

   The introduction describes the MBTI extension and J–P; the development sections explain item selection. The linked OEJTS 1.2 PDF records the questionnaire and license.