Marie-Louise von Franz on the Shadow Side of Introverts and Extroverts

This post is about Introverts and Extroverts in the MBTI system. If you don’t know you type, consider taking an online, free MBTI test.

“If an extravert falls into his introversion, it will be especially genuine and especially pure and deep. Extraverts are often so proud of this that they boast loudly about what great introverts they are. They try to make it a feather in their cap – which is typically extraverted again – and thereby ruin the whole thing. But actually, if they do not spoil it with vanity, you can see that they can have a much more childlike, naive, pure and really genuine introversion than introverts. Just as an introvert, if he wakes up to his inferior extraversion can spread a glow of life and make life in his surroundings into a symbolic festival, better than any extravert! He can give outer life a depth of symbolic meaning and a feeling of life as a magic feast which the extravert cannot. If an extravert goes to a party he is ready to say that everybody is marvelous and, “Come on, let’s get this party going!” But that is a technique and like that the party never really reaches magical depth, or very rarely; it remains on the level of the amiable surface. But if an introvert can come out with his extraversion in the right way, he can create an atmosphere where outside things become symbolic: drinking a glass of wine with a friend becomes something like a communion, and so on.” – Marie-Loiuse von Franz, Lectures on Jung’s Typology