Intuition - Origin and Definition

Just a word of warning Tomas - I do tend to phrase things in language that sounds like statement. It's the old Enneagram 5 thing! These are meant as ideas to explore rather than hard edged, except where I describe my own inner experience of course.

TomasM said:

My intent is to gain a fuller understanding of intuition through the aggregate. I do not wish to attempt to create a competitive environment where right and wrong drives egos towards a single definition. Jung was an amazing genius and has given us a gift with his insight into the conscious and unconscious mind. In my opinion we would not be honoring him if we didn't make a concerted effort to grow the understanding in a similar manner that Einstein further developed his theory of gravity in the shadow of Newton. This is not to suggest that we are as capable as Einstein but that doesn't mean we can't collectively grow the understanding through a group of high intuitives with access to a world of information (the internet).

Click to expand...

Sorry about that - I wasn't intending to suggest you were. I was just clarifying my own position, which is that most different concepts of intuition are valid within their own conceptual frameworks - which means that it's important to be clear which one is being used in order to understand the meaning intent. I agree that they are all interesting and several of them are important parts of language in that they encapsulate different nuances of meaning in unique ways. Almost always though, when I myself use the term in relation to my own intuition, I mean as defined by Jung.

I think the story of intuition in scientific insight is fascinating. It's only part of the story though - William Blake's intuition was off the scale.

TomasM said:

I share this trait and experience. We are truly a minority of internal depth surrounded by a majority driven by their shallow sensory functions. Yet I have found great joy in appreciating the sensory genius for the experience and awareness they foster around us.

Click to expand...

I'm not comfortable about the value judgement here. I can understand where it comes from - many years ago, I got stuck with a group of ESTP computer salesmen on a trip from the UK to LA, and it was (nearly) hell on earth. But that's because they were so very different in how they related to the world rather than because they were by definition shallow. I come across shallow intuitives as well so it's not function-based. Some of the most impressive sensor types I met were the ISTP craftsmen I met while working in the Antarctic. These guys thought with their hands and, as I got to know them, I got this amazement and appreciation for their way of being - so very different from my own and so very engaged with the way they worked that was as much beyond me as my ways were beyond them. Like me, and like all introverted intuitives, they bring the world into themselves rather than projecting their sense of identity out into it like the extroverts, but they identify with the substance of what's out there where I identify with the patterns within me that relate to what's out there to a greater or lesser degree.

TomasM said:

It was not my intent to suggest that a person is only sensory or only intuitive as that would be counter to the underlying foundation of dichotomies. Instead I look at why someone chooses to lean more towards the intuitive over the sensory. When I wrote this question I was specifically thinking about discussions I've had with highly intuitive people who have expressed an awareness of physical sensory deprivation.

This led me to empathize with those that are highly sensory and my conclusion was that: why would a person with highly developed senses that produced an amazing experience of reality (perhaps teetering on the euphoric at the highest level) ever choose to prefer intuition. Similarly, why would someone with an extremely high level of intuition prefer it unless that feeling of "euphoria" was somewhat diminished.

I'm not suggesting that the sensory is diminished only that the question should be explored and that there is value in understanding why more people prefer one over the other.

I really like how you challenged this assertion and I can be okay with either outcome if the information leads us in that direction.

Click to expand...

The crucial word here is 'choice'. We cannot consciously choose our preferred functions any more than we can choose which hand we prefer - it's determined in a combination of our genes and our infancy. We can try and consciously over-ride that but the experience is, by analogy, like training yourself to use your left hand when you are naturally right-handed. You may well become quite proficient, but you'll never become at home with it like a native type does. It will drain your energy and you'll have a hard time keeping up with people who are proficient natives of that type. I experienced this before I retired working in a very NT environment and lived a lot of the time in my Ti - and it was very tiring as I can see with hindsight.

Why an infant should develop one way rather than another sounds fascinating and it may well have environmental components, but there will not be any rational choice as far as I can see. When people do experience a change of type, it's because they were mis-typed before. I tested out as borderline INFP/J when I first came across MBTI, but I'm not at all like the people I've subsequently met who obviously are of these types.

Something you may be interested in is that in my photography I seem to go through a short circuit between Ni and Se as I take a picture. I rarely set up a photograph carefully and systematically - I explore a scene with my camera hand held and take what looks right in the viewfinder. There's obviously judgement in the selection but that's almost subliminal in relationship to the dance between what I see and how I feel about it's structure and it's atmosphere. In capturing the picture, I'm synthesising what's out there and also infusing my emotional reaction to it.

TomasM said:

I agree that everyone has both the intuitive and sensory capacity. I also believe that there are people who have a high proficiency on both sides of a given dichotomy yet choose to prefer the opposite for various reasons. For example, a person could have the intuitive capacity of a god (metaphor) and still prefer the sensory for its experience.

That said, if a person who preferred the sensory over their intuition attempted to use their intuition daily in their functions, wouldn't it be deficient? For example, if their cognitive functions were fine tuned to the sensory wouldn't they lack the ability to call their intuition quickly in a moments notice from the unconscious mind? If the mind and brain are fine tuned over a long period of time doesn't it start to lose at least some of its potential in that capacity? Also, if the brain can't quickly make an unconscious choice through intuition doesn't that defeat the purpose of having it?

The development of intuition can be incredibly valuable if it can be a plug and play scenario but is the mind truly capable of achieving this when it is conditioned for the opposite side of a dichotomy. If a person prefers the far side of the sensory spectrum could they ever achieve Ni and how close does someone need to be to Ni in order to find value using it in the real world? I don't know the answers to this but I do find value in understanding both sides of that coin.

Click to expand...

Just to develop my thoughts further - in many ways my Se is as much a give-away about my type as is Ni. It was hard work living in Ti for much of my working days before I retired, but I am good at it - I did maths at uni (too many years ago) and I was good at that. But even so, it tired me and I couldn't compete with the best, who were dominant T's. In maths, you have to go a long way running on Ti before you get to the innovative areas that are Ni hunting grounds. But Se - I start to space out if I over-indulge. Some sensors can drive safely all day, and it seems to relax them and energise them - it knackers me after about 2 hours, and I've overwhelmed quickly by the sensory input in a noisy bar or party. I'm in a dream as I walk about and I have to hope my body knows where I'm going a lot of the time while I'm on the other side of the universe, or hiking up Mount Doom. There's no way I could ever live by choice in Se - maybe I could last longer in Si but there I'd not resist being drawn out into the inner majik lol. What I do have is the way my Se fills the world with a glow of mystery and spirit - as my least conscious function it seems to spray fairy dust all over everything out there!

TomasM said:

YES, it was valuable and thank you for taking the time to respond. I like it when you challenge both sides of my preconceived ideas and keep me centered on understanding the complete picture. I certainly have my own biases and having a group to keep that it check will always be preferred.

Click to expand...

It's been useful for me too to go over this ground again. As you probably realise though from the threads out there in the forum, there has been a lot of discussion about such things over the years. I fear I'm repeating much of what I've already said in the past, but then it's often good to go back over old ground and see if things look different. I'm intrigued by your OP which actually sounded more like an INTP analytical approach than an INFJ one. I started to wonder if intuition could really be approached that way - I don't think it can. But then a synoptic view of what is out there in the concepts and the literature, and how individuals relate to it all, certainly can. But in the end the acid tests is - do we know what intuition feels like within and, if we confident it is intuition that we are using, how do all the models and concepts out there stack up against these?

I'm older than most here, and highly spiritual, Thomas. Intuition comes and goes and in different amounts at times.

A man sat next to me while having breakfast about 3 months after I fired him. I asked him what he was doing sitting next to me. He said he could eat anywhere he wanted whenever he wanted.

Immediately, my thoughts were this: "you definitely won't be eating here in the morning, because your son BXXXX is going to die in the morning and you will be there instead of here." I thought how rude my thoughts were, and turned back to finish eating. Was I hoping his son, a cocky thief, would die to keep him away? Maybe I just imagined it?

I received a phone call about 5:15 AM the next day from one of my best friends who worked with his son. I answered the phone, but was dazed and half asleep. He was talking wild, fast, and loud. He said, "just me, Bxxxx just died in a car accident." I interrupted him and said, "That was yesterday." He said it just happened less than ten minutes ago." He asked if I was OK. I asked if I could call him later, then went back to sleep thinking it might be a bad dream.

The guy's blood sugar fell, causing him to go into a diabetic coma. He ran into a large bridge support and burned.

Just told that to a good friend, who told me that was heavy intuition. Things have happened similarly over many years. I have to be cautious of what I say and what I think. What would you think, Thomas? Is God sharing things with me? Maybe He is teaching me to think positively? Forgiveness? Do I have a third eye? Intuition? I have my own thoughts, but would love to hear yours, @ ThomasM.

She's a bit heavy going for me but I sometimes dip into my Portable Hannah Arendt and I'm struck by her relentless insights in every paragraph. (She's an INTP.) She seems to dispense with the outward form of a concept and quickly expose its essence. I think Einstein (another INTP) said that “the first act of insight is to dispense with the labels”.

I'm not sure I like to take ideas that have possibly esoteric roots and couch them in the framework of science. Is it genetic or environmental in origin? Maybe it's neither? Maybe it's something more existential? Maybe, for example, it has parallels in ancient spiritual ideas of 'attachment'?

Maybe a kind of fear drives most people to attach to the outward form of things? The outward form of ethics(morality); of feeling (sentimentality); of ideas (ideologies); of spirituality, mysticism and faith (religion, ritual and belief) and so on.

That attachment to outward form can be seen everywhere, from chain store fashions to generic interior design trends, sentimental music and kitschy art, religious fundamentalism and received morality. Maybe the fear becomes mere habit, and habit becomes comforting?

Maybe it's in a weaker attachment to form, a lesser need for that existential grounding, that so-called intuition lies? Maybe, given enough inherent intelligence, when the weight of form is removed intuition can flourish?

When the labels are removed the under lying relationships are clearer. And they can be reapplied across contexts. When morality is removed right and wrong become clearer. When sentimentality is removed motive becomes clearer. When belief is removed truth becomes clearer.

Jung gave a cognitive account of intuition. He also said somewhere that it was intuition that was the gateway to the spiritual. That seemed to me an ungainly conflation of the mundane and the esoteric, but perhaps less so if much of human psychic experience is seen as an ambivalent relationship with attachment and the need for grounding.

Emily Bronte (a 4w5 or 5w4) had no known relationships, almost no association with anyone beyond her father and sisters, hardly ventured beyond her village and was dead by about 30. But the psychological insight she displayed into several character archetypes in Wuthering Heights was uncanny.