The Lenore Thomson Exegesis Wiki
This might be what Lenore Thomson means by extraversion and introversion (as attitudes that people can take, not as personality types).
Perhaps from an extraverted standpoint, your stake in things is in the world:
| • | In specific results that you want to achieve (Extraverted Thinking) |
| • | In your standing in the community and your relationships with specific people (Extraverted Feeling) |
| • | In unknown and unrealized potential that you hope to release or make visible (Extraverted Intuition) |
| • | In action and enjoyment right now, doing what comes naturally and obviously, seeing and being seen (Extraverted Sensation) |
And perhaps from an introverted standpoint, your stake in things is not defined in terms of something in the world, but in the realization or existence, in any form, of a kind of pattern or way of being:
| • | In harmony of elements, rational order, emergent design revealing an underlying principle (Introverted Thinking) |
| • | In harmony between living needs and the environment (Introverted Feeling) |
| • | In communion with a transcendent reality or with the totality of things, including what cannot be seen or even described (Introverted Intuition) |
| • | In faithfulness to the natural order of things (Introverted Sensation) |
Developing A Function, then, would work like this:
| • | For extraverted functions, finding things in the world to have a stake in, learning how to achieve them, and getting involved in the give-and-take of achieving them. |
| • | For introverted functions, becoming aware of something that matters to you, a calling, that could be realized in an infinity of possible ways. |
This suggests that Developing A Function is vastly more complex and difficult than gear-shifting Theories would suggest. It's not a matter of learning a skill or heuristic but of acquiring a consciously understood stake in something. In the case of introversion, Developing A Function would consist of recognizing your interest in living in a kind of State Of Grace regardless of any particular circumstance in which you happen to be involved. In the case of extraversion, Developing A Function would mean seeing yourself as having a stake in the world beyond your internal state, having to choose among and respond to worldly matters.
The unpleasantness we experience when our Inferior Function leads us to do or feel things outside our normal sense of self, would be a symptom of neglecting either the extraverted or introverted side of life. The part of the brain that looks out for our interests in the way that we have most neglected sends an alarm and demands action.
The Tertiary Temptation is to silence that alarm by finding new reasons to understand our stakes in purely extraverted or introverted terms, suiting our Dominant Function.
The Secondary Function would be the particular style of extraversion or introversion that suits your talents best and builds best upon your prior investments (both cognitively and in the world). Each Function Attitude would be a particular way of tapping into your extraverted or introverted stakes. Each has its blind spots even within the extraverted or introverted worlds, so none gives you full consciousness of all of your stakes in either world. The Secondary Function usually offers the most feasible next move from where you are in the world opposite your Dominant Function.