The Ecstatic Soul

Book excerpt: Among the personality types, the INFJ stands out as a genuine mystery. The most intuitive of the intuitives, he looks like a thinker among feelers. Introverts mistake him for an extrovert. Realists mistake him for an idealist. Dreamers think he is too rational, yet the truly rational types see in him an obscure, emotional mystic. He is a prophet for some, an abstract loner for others. After all these years, the INFJ is still misunderstood. Worse, he does not even understand himself. When he tries to grasp his material body, he loses all sense of the material. When he directs his attention to concepts, he misses the intimacy of sense perception. The metaphysical predicament of the INFJ is that he dwells at the crossing between intuition and sensation, thinking and feeling. Everyone and yet no one: this is how he experiences himself. On the surface, the INFJ personality is a paradox. This book attempts to solve the paradox and uncover the true nature of the INFJ, using the method of existential phenomenology. It will be of interest to INFJs, as well as to anyone with an affinity for the work of Carl Jung, philosophy, psychology, and typology-based theories of personality. Finally, The Ecstatic Soul is the manifesto of Jungian Existentialism, foreshadowing a new movement in personality theory.