"Carl Jung coined the terms "introversion" and "extroversion" and I think he'd jibe with your post -- introversion and extroversion are not properly understood as simplistic binary alternatives. People will tend to have one that is their dominant mode in most situations, but the other mode (when secondary, Jung used the term "inferior function") will just about always be present and in some situations actually dominate.


Jung was very interested in the inferior functions. He seemed to believe that the inferior functions often were the place of some of the richest possible growth and learning for people. The inferior function is often the most unconscious for a person, and Jung was of course pretty interested in what was going on with someone's unconscious....


To boot, Jung talked about human development as striving towards a rythym of introversion and extroversion that he likened to the systolic diastolic functions of the heart -- human life works best with both!! To flesh this out some more, he stated that one function will probably always be "first nature" for any individual and the other a sort of second nature, but "second natures" -- learned, hard-won development -- are an amazingly great and important part of human life.


Wow, never thought I'd be throwing this stuff down in a Slashdot post. The streams have crossed....


Curt. "


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