The Lenore Thomson Exegesis Wiki

Extraverted Feeling

What does Lenore mean by extraverted feeling?

(Often abbreviated "Fe".)

Quasi-defining statements

p. 40: "When we use Feeling in an Extraverted way, it facilitates a complex social vocabulary, by which we express and recognize the values we hold in common with others."

p. 318: "...organizing data by relatedness to ourselves."

p. 318: "Extraverted Feeling is conceptual and analytic. It encourages us to make rational choices, to measure our options for relationship against an external standard of behaviors. What distinguishes this function from Extraverted Thinking is the fact that relatedness involves human beings, not impersonal abstractions."

p. 323: "The customs that constitute our [Extraverted?] Feeling vocabulary are (socially) inherited forms that shape the relationships we establish and maintain. Their meaning is not straightforward but cumulative, becoming apparent as we use them and recognize their effects." (As a Function Attitude, then, Fe would be the ability to see people's behaviors in terms of such customs: as recognizable declarations of different kinds of relationship.)

p. 370: "Extraverted Feeling relies on the outward, left-brain criteria of custom and law to mark off decisions that go beyond our immediate experience to affect the larger community. For example, in chapter 20, I mentioned rape and child abuse, which are not matters of individual choice, because they poison the society that tolerates them." (Compare Introverted Feeling.)

Proposed definition

Hypothesis: Extraverted Feeling is the attitude of viewing everything in terms of what role it defines for people to play in regard to each other. When you say "How are you?" to someone, you are playing a role. It's a role that is intrinsically connected to other people's social roles; you can't play it by yourself. When the other person says, "Oh, not too bad. How about yourself?", they are playing out the complementary role. From an Fe perspective, by definition, every act is a declaration of what role you would like to play in the social setting.

When people speak of someone else's action as an attempt to "define them", they are making a proposition that only has meaning through Fe. For example, if a male boss says to a female employee, "Get me a cup of coffee," from an Fe perspective, this would be an attempt to "define" the employee as subservient and as a waitress or personal caretaker. If she goes along with it, then she is accepting that as her social role. Of course, she has the option to not go along with it. She can negotiate to play a different role, and the only way to do this is to push her boss into modifying his role. She could say, "I'm an engineer, not a waitress." Her boss now must choose roles when he responds. He could insist firmly on the dominant/subservient roles, with something like "I'm the boss here, and I just asked you for a cup of coffee. Now get it," in which case he risks having other people refuse to play along with his desired role, which could leave him playing big boss all by himself, which is no fun. Or he could go along and establish his boss role in a slightly modified form: "Ah, terribly sorry. I'll call the cafeteria staff. What'll you have to drink?"

In this manner, from an Fe standpoint, everyone is continually defining each other and getting defined by each other, as they establish social roles that others implicitly agree to go along with.

Every act a display of loyalty: neutrality not possible

Sometimes you get into situations where some people you know will play along with one role and other people will give you a hard time if you do. For example, if you do things outside of the usual gender roles, some people won't care and others will ostracize you or worse. Or if you wear the traditional clothing of one religion, other people of that religion will treat you with great respect, but people from different religions will often treat you badly. Because of this ever-present possibility, every act you take is a proclamation of which group of people you choose to cast your lot with. From the Fe perspective, everything you do says, "My loyalties are with these people. Deal with it."

There is no escaping the fact that everything you do is such a declaration; no statement, no matter how factual or impersonal, can be truly neutral. Every statement is acting out a role, which some people will play along with and others won't.

As a mode of ego-orientation

As a mode of ego-orientation, Extraverted Feeling leads you to understand yourself as having a personal stake in the role that others in your community cast you in. By the role they cast you in and that you play--the role that emerges from the sort of negotiation described above--you exist. If that role is bad, then it's a loss to your very self. If that role is good, then your very self has increased.

People with developed Fe tend to create implied bargains with other people about what sort of role they will play in regard to each other. They make an opening "bid" where they cast the other person in a positive role, e.g. "Would you be willing to spare a moment of your time to share your expertise with me?", casting the other person as an expert and a very important person. The implied contract is that if they treat you as a very important person, then you will each have very satisfying social roles. But if you get out of line, then you will withdraw your willingness to cast them in that role. Each line where you play the other person up thus creates a sort of debt: now they "owe" you some response that makes you important.

Strokes

Eric Berne writes, in Games People Play, Chapter 3, "Procedures and Rituals", that the purpose of stereotyped behaviors like saying "hello" is to give each other strokes--recognitions of your existence--and to demonstrate that you are "reliable"--that is, willing to play your social role. Berne sees strokes as necessary to keep "your spinal cord from shriveling up". Demonstrating a dominant-Fe attitude, Berne views recognition of your social role as the most important thing in life, at least for most people. He says that strokes--even "negative strokes"--are as necessary to human life as food and water.

He says that we perform intuitive "calculations" to see how many strokes we "owe" or "are owed". If someone "owes" you a lot of strokes--say, because they went on vacation for a couple weeks and are back--and they don't give you an exceptionally effusive greeting, this is slighting you. If they keep it up, they will "cause some talk in their community".

Viewed from the Fe perspective, then, everything is in some way a stroke and an attempt to get a stroke from someone else.

Hypothesis: Chapters 3 and 4 of Games People Play are pretty thorough theoretical description of the Fe attitude.


This is in the realm of the left brain's selective attention to the things we value, particulaly in terms of human relations and relatedness, not necessarily in a sentimental way, but a rational way. So, who we befriend, love, hate are reflected here.

Questions

Is it possible to take an Extraverted Feeling attitude alone on a desert island?


See also: Feeling, other Function Attitudes.

Version 11 2004-Jun-06 08:52 UTC

Last edit by Ben Kovitz