As I reflect on the almost obsessive way some folks approach type, it is as if they think that there is an actual part of the brain where the functions of type are located. And such "thinking" about type is somewhat dangerous as it leads to an overly concretized view of how all of it works. And that is just one step away from a deterministic view of personality.
I prefer to think that Jung was attempting to give us a practical metaphor for very complex things in the way the brain works. He was reporting on patterns observed in literature, philosophy, and available evidence from his lab studies. In essense, I think it is helpful to think of Sensing, Intuiting, Thinking, and Feeling as labels for very complex neurological processes. In a sense, each is a "gestalt" of a particular neurological system.
An example I offer is the difference between Sensing and Intuiting. Jung referred to these as irrational and I prefer to see them as pre-rational processes. As perceiving processes, we don't turn them on or off--they just are and they serve our need to have information about the world.
If my proposition is correct that Sensing and Intuiting are labels to lots of complicated elements of perception, then think of Sensing as the aspect in our psychological processes that calls upon realistic awareness and verifiable evidence. Intuiting is the aspect in our psychological processes that seeks out patterns, linkages, or pathways among data points. In either case there is a great deal going on, which is why I think it is often hard for individuals to imagine doing the opposite of their preference. It feels like it would take a great deal of energy to see the world from the others' lens.
And I think it would take a great deal of energy for Sensing folks to work on Intuiting and Intuiting folks to strive to see the world through Sensing in any exculsive way.
We double the trouble when we start reflecting on how these perceptions operate with Extraverted or Introverted energy.....which of course they do and produce remarkable consistent takes on what is real and how to perceive experience. And I plan to share some thoughts about this complication in a later blog entry.
A metaphor serves as a a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, or is something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.
We certainly know that there are specific parts of the brain dedicated to sensory input but how that sensory input gets transformed into an aspect of the Sensing preference as we think of it in type is both very complicated and mysterious. So Sensing as a term is a metaphor (a figure of speech representing something it is not in a literal way) about how much psychological energy is put into the experience of life in a direct way.
And in a more profound sense, when we think of Sensing and Intuiting as contrasting ways of becoming aware of experience, we realize that together they make more of a whole than just by themselves and that they are tied together in a way that only consciousness and unconscious processes can make sense of. So if you have a preference for Sensing in conscoius awareness you can count on Intuiting processes being very busy in unconscious ways, and vice versa for Intuiting.
I call it a practical metaphor simply because it makes complex things accessible and understandable; it gives us a way to understand experience--our blindspots and our pulls toward and away from information in life.
It seems freeing to me to think of type this way as it indicates that we are at a gateway of a journey not at the end of it. We are just beginning to discover rather than have an answer. Further, it implies that propsection about one's psychological patterns is more useful than description. In other words, how I use the understanding to move toward solutions and adaptation is more important than the degree to which am absolute in my description of the processes of type.
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