Extraversion

Superior Attitude

The extraverted attitude is an adaptational strategy that is oriented to maintaining a positive relation with the object. Being so externally oriented, the extravert has a tendency to identify with the object and to engage it so far that it can lead to a forgetfulness of what is pushed into the unconscious, their subjective ego. To the extravert, the object is the highest and most pure factor of reality, so much so that it begins to embody the extraverts raison detre.

In the first case the object works like a magnet upon the tendencies of the subject; it determines the subject to a large extent and even alienates him from himself. His qualities may become so transformed by assimilation to the object that one might think it possessed some higher and decisive significance for him.^[1]

As a result, the extravert is highly attuned to the environment, they become very adaptable characters who are resilient and largely unbothered existentially because of their non-resistance to what is external. If they begin to develop complexes, they merge with the social current or with objects of their interest to become reassured that everything is in order, that everything is ultimately okay. This creates a sort of inner coldness where the self is put out of the picture of external happenings, lest it be one's effect on the object, rather than the object's effect on oneself.

By way of physiology, the extravert is chronically under-aroused, giving a feeling of boredom and unfulfilling that needs to be made up for.^[2] Thus the extravert actually has an inadequate feeling relationship with the object, and to cover this up they energetically block it by moving towards objects which ultimately bring their arousal level up to an optimum degree.^[2] Eysenck explains that this is because of their strong inhibition of the object, which leads them towards resiliency.

In this way, the extravert has no need to form their own individual opinions, they give themselves and their subjective disposition up too much to the environment and find that their individualism might be an infringement on this object which holds so much positive value for them, leading it to being repressed in the unconscious.^[1]

Nominalism^[1]

Jung notes in Chapter 1 of Psychological Types that the extravert corresponds to nominalism in the medieval problem of universals. What this means is that the extravert treats objects as themselves, as agents of their own properties which cannot be accurately described or explained by some vague overarching universal. Instead, the universalistic, realistic attitude is repressed in the unconscious.

Inferior Attitude

The inferior attitude of the extravert is that which fundamentally opposes this attitude, the introvert. As a result of excessive repression the extravert begins to project their attitude onto the extravert, the attitude of thick-skin. This results in seeing the introvert as cold, aloof, arrogant, and selfish, and when the introverted characteristics inevitably come to influence the extravert, he becomes self-critical, autoerotic, collective fearing, and lonely.^[3]

References

[1] Jung, C. G. (1923). Psychological types: Or, The Psychology of Individuation.

[2] Eysenck, H. J. (1947). Dimensions of Personality.

[3] Meier, C. A. (1995). Personality: The Individuation Process in Light of C.G. Jung’s Typology. Daimon.