Possession by the Inferior Function

When the inferior-function erupts, it does so without the modulation conscious functions provide. The eruption has, in marie-louise-von-franz‘s phrase, “a barbaric character.” When introverts fall into extraversion through their inferior function, “they do so in a possessed and barbaric way… like a car without brakes that goes on without the slightest control of consciousness” (von Franz 1993). The possessed ego shouts, pushes, dominates the room — the inferior extraversion of the introvert manifesting socially because that is the only register in which it knows how to manifest.

People are uniquely manipulable through this function. “Where you feel inferior you get fanatical and touchy and are easily influenced. The expression on a friend’s face can affect the feeling of a thinking type because his feeling is in the unconscious and therefore open to influence” (von Franz and Hillman 2013). The inferior function is the soft place in the typological armor — the place through which propaganda, flattery, and unconscious projection enter the personality unimpeded.

Possession by the fourth is the constitutive failure mode of typology. It is also the necessary occasion for the work: only what has possessed one can be met. The capacity to recognize the eruption as the inferior function speaking — rather than as the world being unjust or the friend being treacherous — is the first step in the dissolution of the dominant function’s tyranny.

Relationships

Primary sources

Psychotherapy (von Franz 1993)
Lectures on Jung’s Typology (von Franz and Hillman 2013)