Four Functions and the Quaternity

Jung’s typology resolves consciousness into four orienting functions — thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition — disposed as two pairs of opposites: the rational pair (thinking and feeling, the evaluative functions) and the irrational pair (sensation and intuition, the perceptive functions). One function rises as superior, two as auxiliary, and the fourth opposite the superior remains inferior. The structure is a cross.

That three of the four can be brought into consciousness while the fourth resists is the structural fact from which the entire doctrine of typological wholeness departs. “Three of the four orienting functions are available to consciousness… His inferior function will be feeling (valuation), which remains in a retarded state and is contaminated with the unconscious” (Jung 1958, ¶245). The unintegrated three form a trinity of orientation; the integration of the fourth turns trinity into quaternity — the symbol of psychic wholeness whose alchemical analog is the lapis-philosophorum. “In our fairytale the triad appears as a mutilated quaternity. If only one leg could be added to the other three, it would make a whole” (Jung 1959, ¶430).

The cross is therefore not a static map but a developmental program. The superior function names the ego’s specialization; the inferior function names what the self requires for completion. The work of individuation is the work of admitting the fourth.

Relationships

• jung-psychological-types
• inferior-function
• quaternity-timaean
• self
• individuation
• lapis-philosophorum

Primary sources

• jung-psychological-types (Jung 1921)
• the-archetypes-and-the-collective-unconscious (Jung 1959, ¶430)
• Psychology and Religion: West and East (Jung 1958, ¶245)