Inferior Function as Door to the Unconscious

marie-louise-von-franz‘s most consequential contribution to the doctrine of the inferior-function is the recognition that the fourth is not merely one feature of the personality but the structural threshold through which the figures of the unconscious enter consciousness. “The inferior function is the door through which all the figures of the unconscious enter. Our conscious functions throw a kind of barrier… but the unconscious enters through the inferior function” (von Franz 1993).

The door has consequences for every other figure. The shadow in any type tends to be personified by a figure of the inferior function: “in a thinking type it will appear as a relatively inferior or primitive feeling person.” When the anima or animus appears in dreams, it takes on the typological coloring of the fourth — “the anima figure, if personified by a particular human being, will very often appear as a person of the opposite function.” Even personifications of the self arrive through this door, contaminated with its character (von Franz 1993).

The point is not metaphorical. The inferior function is the place where the psyche is still raw enough to admit what consciousness has not yet learned to refuse. Every encounter with depth has had to pass through it. To work on one’s typology is therefore not a parlor game but a structural condition of admitting the unconscious to the council of the personality.

Relationships

• inferior-function
• shadow
• anima
• animus
• self
• transcendent-function
• collective-unconscious
• marie-louise-von-franz

Primary sources

• Psychotherapy (von Franz 1993)