Sensing, as treated across the depth-psychology corpus, occupies a contested and richly stratified position. In Jungian typological literature — most extensively elaborated by von Franz and Quenk — Sensing names a discrete psychological function concerned with the direct apprehension of concrete, present-moment reality, standing in structural opposition to Intuition and entering into complex hierarchical relations with Thinking and Feeling within the typological framework. The distinction between Introverted and Extraverted Sensing, and the dynamics of Sensing as dominant, auxiliary, tertiary, or inferior function, generate an entire phenomenology of character, stress response, and individuation potential. Alongside this Jungian lineage, neuroscientific contributors — Damasio, Craig, Porges, Barrett, Levine, and LeDoux — reframe sensing as the biological substrate of consciousness itself: the organism’s continuous monitoring of internal and external states, indistinguishable at its foundations from feeling and homeostatic regulation. Damasio’s insistence that sensing and responding constitute the very machinery upon which consciousness and feeling depend gives the term an ontological weight that resonates, perhaps unexpectedly, with Simondon’s transductive account of sensation as the living being’s grasping of polarity relative to its own median zone. The Taoist I Ching, via Liu I-ming, introduces a further valence: authentic sensing as a function of the ‘real mind’ rather than the artificial mentality, true sensing occurring only when yin and yang commune through the mind of Tao. These convergences and divergences — typological, neurobiological, metaphysical — make ‘Sensing’ one of the more philosophically charged terms in the corpus.
When you use the artificial mind, sensing is inaccurate; yin and yang dichotomize. When you use the real mind, sensing is true; yin and yang commune.
This passage argues that the quality of sensing is ontologically conditioned by the quality of mind employed: only the ‘real mind’ — the mind of Tao — yields true sensing, while the ‘human mentality’ produces distortion and polarity.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
Anesthesia suspends the processes of sensing and responding. I believe that in complex creatures such as humans anesthesia suspends feelings and consciousness because feelings and consciousness depend on the general machinery of sensing and responding.
Damasio advances the foundational claim that feeling and consciousness are downstream consequences of the universal biological machinery of sensing and responding, making sensing the infrastructural condition for subjective experience.
, The strange order of things life, feeling, and the making, 2018thesis
For ISTJ, therefore, Sensing that is introverted (commonly referred to as Introverted Sensing) is the dominant function.
Quenk illustrates the typological method for identifying Sensing as dominant function, establishing the structural primacy of Introverted Sensing in ISTJ personality dynamics and the cascade of consequences for psychological development.
, Was That Really Me? How Everyday Stress Brings Out Our Hidden Personality, 2002thesis
Introverted Sensing types are careful and orderly in their attention to facts and details. They are thorough and conscientious in fulfilling their responsibilities. They may sometimes even do the work of others rather than leave important tasks undone.
This passage provides the canonical phenomenological portrait of dominant Introverted Sensing as a character orientation defined by conscientious detail-attention, grounded realism, and a deep sense of responsibility.
, Was That Really Me? How Everyday Stress Brings Out Our Hidden Personality, 2002thesis
The first usage of sensation is more transductive than relational: sensation allows us to grasp how the medium extends into the
Simondon reframes sensation as transductive rather than merely relational, arguing that the living being grasps polarity — hottest/coldest, brightest/darkest — relative to its own median zone, making sensing an act of triadic orientation rather than binary comparison.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
The inner and outer worlds of the body constantly fluctuate. The nervous system monitors these environmental changes and responds adaptively in order to maintain a homeostatic balance and promote survival.
Khalsa positions sensing perturbations as the operational core of interoceptive research, linking the body’s continuous self-monitoring to homeostatic regulation and its disruption in psychiatric disorders.
, Interoception and Mental Health: A Roadmap, 2018thesis
our current childrearing and intervention strategies are not at all geared to helping Jung children sense their internal physiological states. We do not provide infants and Jung children with descriptive or symbolic tools to represent internal states
Porges argues that the developmental capacity to sense internal physiological states is systematically neglected by clinical and caregiving frameworks that privilege external sensory processing over interoceptive awareness.
, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation, 2011supporting
by refining their own capacity to observe the subtle behaviors of others, therapists can provide their clients feedback that helps them become aware of their sensations and feelings.
Levine situates somatic sensing — both self-directed and intersubjective — as the therapeutic foundation of trauma work, constructing sensation as the first channel in his SIBAM model of body-mind processing.
, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010supporting
Some Introverted Sensing types become more exaggerated versions of themselves in their older years. They may develop rigid rules and unvarying routines, insisting that everyone conform to their way of doing things.
Quenk describes the shadow side of dominant Introverted Sensing in later life: without integration of inferior Intuition, the function can calcify into controlling rigidity, illustrating the developmental stakes of one-sided typological dominance.
, Was That Really Me? How Everyday Stress Brings Out Our Hidden Personality, 2002supporting
When persistent stress causes them to be chronically in the grip of inferior Introverted Sensing, they are likely to lose touch with their natural enthusiasm for future possibilities and their trust in their ability to successfully overcome obstacles.
This passage describes how Extraverted Intuitive types, when captured by inferior Introverted Sensing under chronic stress, exhibit obsessive focus on minor facts and details — a shadow inversion of their dominant orientation.
, Was That Really Me? How Everyday Stress Brings Out Our Hidden Personality, 2002supporting
Introverted Sensing types may enjoy relaxing their use of Sensing by reading fantasy fiction, watching science fiction movies, or entertaining themselves with idle speculation and daydreams.
Quenk notes that Introverted Sensing types seek relief from their dominant function through Intuitive activities, suggesting that even dominant functions require periodic suspension and that the inferior function exerts a compensatory pull.
, Was That Really Me? How Everyday Stress Brings Out Our Hidden Personality, 2002supporting
Extraverted Sensing types may experience some uneasiness about their natural affinity for fun in the present moment, often picking up on others’ disapproval of their carefree approach to life.
The passage characterizes Extraverted Sensing’s phenomenological signature — present-moment engagement and spontaneity — and the social friction this generates, pointing to the cultural undervaluation of this function.
, Was That Really Me? How Everyday Stress Brings Out Our Hidden Personality, 2002supporting
for Damasio, feelings are primarily determined by body signals, whereas I think body signals are only one of many ingredients that contribute to feelings.
LeDoux locates a key theoretical divergence: Damasio’s body-sensing model of feelings versus LeDoux’s pluralist account, with direct relevance to how sensing is understood as the substrate of emotional experience.
, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety, 2015supporting
One of the main contributors to the building of subjectivity is the operation of the sensory portals within which we find the organs responsible for generating images of the outside world.
Damasio argues that the spatially anchored sensory portals — eyes, ears, skin — are constitutive of subjective perspective, establishing sensing as the structural origin of first-person experience.
, The strange order of things life, feeling, and the making, 2018supporting
perception of things of sense belongs to the embodied soul and takes place through the body.
Plotinus situates sense-perception as necessarily belonging to the embodied soul rather than to soul in isolation, establishing the somatic ground condition for sensing as a philosophical principle.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
the symbol is recognized by its effect on feeling as well as by its sensuous impression, its intuitional meanings and its ideational content.
Von Franz embeds sensuous impression within a fourfold recognition of the symbol, positioning sensing as one of four co-equal epistemic registers through which psychological reality is grasped.
, Lectures on Jung’s Typology, 2013supporting
Aristotle is confronting the question how it is that we see or in some other way perceive that we see.
The passage introduces Aristotle’s reflexive problem of perceptual self-awareness — how sensing knows itself as sensing — which prefigures depth-psychological questions about the relationship between sensation and consciousness.
, De Anima (On the Soul), -350aside
directing the sound into the belly evokes a particular type of sensation while keeping the observing ego ‘online.’
Levine describes how deliberately evoked bodily sensations can contradict traumatic somatic states and restore regulatory balance, illustrating the therapeutic mobilization of sensing as counter-signal.
, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010aside
The sensory representation of all parts with a potential for movement would be connected to varied sites and levels of the motor system whose activity can cause muscular activity.
Damasio’s somato-motor hypothesis connects sensory representation to motor systems in a dynamic map of the organism, grounding sensing in the body’s action-readiness rather than passive reception.
, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994aside
The interoceptive network issues predictions about your body, tests the resulting simulations against sensory input from your body, and updates your brain’s model of your body in the world.
Barrett frames interoceptive sensing as predictive and model-updating rather than passive input registration, situating sensing within a constructivist neuroscience of emotion.
, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017aside