Thinking

Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘thinking’ occupies a contested and richly stratified position that resists reduction to any single theoretical axis. Jung’s foundational distinction between directed thinking — the word-bound, culturally shaped instrument of empirical rationality — and fantasy thinking — the imagistic, archaic, myth-generating mode — establishes the primary fault line. For Jung, neither mode is superior in an absolute sense; directed thinking built Western technology, while fantasy thinking preserves the living symbolic inheritance of the psyche. Giegerich radicalises this trajectory by insisting that genuine thinking is neither a psychological ‘function’ in the typological sense nor a cognitive operation, but rather the soul’s own self-articulating necessity: a single commanding thought that claims the thinker absolutely. Jaynes approaches from an opposite empirical angle, arguing provocatively that the actual process of thinking — its dark inferential labour — is entirely unconscious; only its preparatory materials and final results enter awareness. Bion’s account of the apparatus of thinking foregrounds the developmental and pathological dimensions, tracing how thought may substitute for, or be perverted by, motor discharge and projective identification. The Zen-psychoanalytic synthesis represented by Cooper introduces a triadic structure — thinking, not-thinking, and non-thinking (hishiryo) — that neither privileges nor abolishes discursive thought. McGilchrist situates thinking within hemispheric asymmetry, cautioning that language-saturated culture systematically overstates the role of verbal cognition. Across these positions the deepest tension is between thinking as a function of the ego and thinking as an autonomous movement of soul or psyche that the ego at best observes.

In the library 21 passages

Thinking (in the sense that we are here talking about it) means three things, 1. having (having experienced, having been reached and claimed by) a thought; 2. absolute obligation to and constraint by this one thought, no freedom, necessity; 3. potential openness to any and all phenomena of life in the light of one’s single thought.

Giegerich defines thinking not as a cognitive function but as an existential and logical event of being seized by, and wholly committed to, a single commanding thought.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis

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thought is not a “function,” even though what JUNG called the “thinking function” is of course one moment in developed, explicit thought. Thought is, as I said earlier, the quinta essentia of, and beyond, all four functions.

Giegerich argues that reducing thought to Jung’s typological ‘thinking function’ is a fundamental category error; genuine thought transcends all four functions as their quintessential ground.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis

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Directed thinking or, as we might also call it, thinking in words, is manifestly an instrument of culture, and we shall not be wrong in saying that the tremendous work of education which past centuries have devoted to directed thinking, thereby forcing it to develop from the subjective, individual sphere to the objective, social sphere, has produced a readjustment of the human mind to which we owe our modern empiricism and technics.

Jung identifies directed thinking — verbal, logical, culturally cultivated — as the cognitive engine of Western empiricism and technology, distinguishing it from the older fantasy mode.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Symbols of Transformation, 1952thesis

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the actual process of thinking, so usually thought to be the very life of consciousness, is not conscious at all and that only its preparation, its materials, and its end result are consciously perceived.

Jaynes makes the radical claim that thinking itself — the inferential process — is entirely unconscious; consciousness receives only its inputs and outputs, not its operative core.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976thesis

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Ansichseiend thinking would then be a thinking in the status of “It,” it would still have an It-character, that is to say it happens of its own accord and on a level beneath conscious intention, almost malgré the thinker (“it thinks in me,” cf. “methinks”). In fürsichseiend thinking, by contrast, thinking has taken on “I-ness.”

Giegerich distinguishes implicit, It-like thinking that happens beneath conscious intention from explicit, I-owned thinking in which the thought’s logical character is fully manifest.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis

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Thinking, not thinking, beyond thought Dogen resolves the question “how do you think of not-thinking?” by positing a triadic relationship based on his elaboration of the encounter dialogue… hishiryo (non-thinking, beyond thinking, beyond thought), as an alteration in perception and relationship to thought processes that simultaneously deconstructs and realizes both shiryo (thinking) and fushiryo (not-thinking).

Cooper, following Dogen, presents a triadic structure in which ‘non-thinking’ (hishiryo) neither suppresses nor privileges thinking but holds thinking and not-thinking in a simultaneously deconstructive and realizing relationship.

Cooper, Seiso Paul, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019thesis

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the fact that we are more aware of those times when we do think explicitly to ourselves in words – and now conceive of all thought as taking place in words – should not deceive us into believing that language is necessary for thought. It could even be an impediment to it.

McGilchrist argues that the cultural dominance of verbal self-awareness generates a systematic illusion that all thinking is linguistic, when in fact language may obstruct rather than constitute thought.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis

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Jung writes about two types of thinking: fantasy thinking and directed thinking. Fantasy thinking is what Miller used in her productions, whereas directed thinking is the more logical, rational, and scientific type of thinking that Jung used in his discussion of the material.

Tozzi clarifies Jung’s foundational distinction between fantasy thinking — imagistic, associative, pre-logical — and directed thinking — rational, scientific, culturally sanctioned — as the cornerstone of his approach to unconscious symbolic material.

Tozzi, Chiara, Active Imagination in Theory, Practice and Training, 2017supporting

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through projective identification thought itself takes on the function previously entrusted to motor discharge—namely ridding the psyche of accretions of stimuli; like “action” it may be directed to altering the environment.

Bion identifies a pathological modality in which thinking is perversely co-opted by projective identification to serve the evacuative function normally belonging to motor discharge, rather than its proper role of reality-modification.

Bion, Wilfred Ruprecht, Learning from Experience, 1962thesis

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purely subjective orientation which I call introverted. This thinking is neither determined by objective data nor directed to them; it is a thinking that starts from the subject and is directed to subjective ideas or subjective facts.

Jung defines introverted thinking as a mode originating from and returning to subjective reference points, constituting the necessary complement to object-oriented extraverted thinking.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychological Types, 1921supporting

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Something that comes as its own self-sublation cannot be imagined; it can only be thought. Psychology cannot be logically innocent and merely relate to the immediate.

Giegerich argues that the self-sublating structure of psychology as a discipline of soul requires thinking as its necessary medium, since imaginal presentation alone cannot achieve the reflexive self-negation that soul demands.

Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting

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the very last touch would still be lacking. That last touch would be the realization through his inferior thinking. Invariably I see that the last realization, the primordial stuff from which the superior function is made, is the last thing to be touched by analysis.

Jung observes that the inferior thinking function — raw, undifferentiated, nature-bound — represents the final and most resistant layer of analytical realisation, whose integration marks the deepest transformation.

Jung, C.G., Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930, 1984supporting

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taking up the thinking function, but taking it up in an already established form… a kind of pupil-like, uncreative attitude that just takes over the entire system unchecked and never asks, “What do I think about it? Does this really convince me?

Von Franz distinguishes genuine development of the thinking function, which demands personal interrogation and verification, from its counterfeit substitute — mechanical adoption of a pre-formed system.

Marie-Louise von Franz, James Hillman, Lectures on Jung’s Typology, 2013supporting

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thinking has come to be believed as antithetical to religious realization. Dogen, however, describes a dynamic relationship between thinking, not thinking, and beyond thought that neither privileges nor devalues either.

Cooper corrects the Rinzai-influenced American reception of Zen, which set thinking against realisation, by appealing to Dogen’s more integrative account that holds all three modes — thinking, not-thinking, and non-thinking — as equally valid.

Cooper, Seiso Paul, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019supporting

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We think because we are, rather than existing because we think. When asked in a pub whether he wanted another beer, Descartes responded, “I think not.” But did he disappear?

Levine inverts the Cartesian primacy of thinking by insisting that bodily, sensorimotor existence precedes and grounds thought, positioning thinking as a secondary rather than foundational process.

Levine, Peter A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010supporting

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By the time he reaches middle age, such a person is identified by others (and, more importantly, by himself) as “the thinker.” He begins to perceive himself as a person whose sole mission in life is to think.

Nichols illustrates how excessive identification with the thinking function produces a one-sided ego crystallised around rational analysis, with compensatory eruptions of repressed feeling.

Nichols, Sallie, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting

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the actual process of reasoning, the dark leap into huge discovery, just as in the simple trivial judgment of weights, has no representation in consciousness. Indeed, it is sometimes almost as if the problem had to be forgotten to be solved.

Jaynes extends his argument to creative reasoning and discovery, showing that the transformative inferential leap — even in major scientific insight — occurs entirely outside consciousness.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting

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if a difficult problem is put before him, he can think about it… he will not be inwardly identical with any of these situations, he will not be tied to one of them any longer, and he will also not be tied, not only to the situation, but to his own ego functions meeting the situation.

Von Franz uses the Zen master as a model for a personality that can employ thinking without ego-identification with it, illustrating the possibility of using the function without being possessed by it.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psychotherapy, 1993aside

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magical thinking does not have to mean anti-scientific gullibility or New Age hucksterism… It can instead be a reality-reordering playfulness of mind, a life-affirming poetic license that takes its rightful place in our psyche, coloring but not animating our perspective.

Masters rehabilitates magical thinking as a legitimate metaphoric and imaginative mode distinct from regressive literalism, locating it within a broader psychological ecology of thought.

Masters, Robert Augustus, Spiritual Bypassing When Spirituality Disconnects Us From, 2012aside

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thinking is so much quicker than any feeling, they always have an answer in a flash. So these people imagine what they could appropriately feel in a given situation.

Banzhaf describes the phenomenology of the thinking-dominant type whose inferential speed outpaces feeling, leaving feeling underdeveloped and its responses simulated rather than spontaneous.

Banzhaf, Hajo, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero, 2000aside

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