@2024-05-07: A "MANIFESTO" TO A TYPE PSYCHOLOGIST

 2024-04-22 

Greetings Dr. [Blank],

“Before I begin, or perhaps I should say rather, before I end” (quoting Eeyore of WINNIE THE POOH), let me underline the following once more. The scientific models you taught me are both profound and effective, and I use them every day to help me understand myself and others. I will always treasure that gift from you, your peers, and your teachers. Few things have been more liberating, humanly speaking, than learning the strengths and weaknesses of my ENFP preferences. 

But you may have noticed that after renewing our FB Friendship, I decided (a few days ago) to block your page. I thought I owed you an explanation as a former student. It was not out of “personal offense”, Fi-style (if I understand what that “function” implies correctly). Why, then? 

First, my FB feed was flooded with posts from your page. Even un-following it didn’t stem the tide. Second, it seemed (again, if I understood what I saw) that your 7th-level “Trickster” Te had become “akin to chaos”. Your posts - humorous and otherwise - seemed “all over the map”. “What kind of stress is she facing?” I had to wonder. 

But the third factor was the most troubling. Many posts and memes have seemed a) self-contradictory and/or b) ill-informed and/or c) contrarian and/or d) outright inflammatory. The contrast was so striking with the compassionate, empathetic, and even wise statements and memes you posted that one might wonder if they came from the same person. To be fair, if *I put up all the thoughts that come to *my mind, you might ask if I am a complete sophist - or a hypocrite. Such is the mixture of good and evil in the human condition! 

So, call the following a “manifesto” in response. Please forgive the ENFP-ish length of it. You had no opportunity to hear or read such things from me in counsel.

A LITTLE ON WHAT RELIGION TEACHES ME 

You once told me that Carl Jung “just knew” (intuitively) that God exists. From some recent posts, it appears “at first blush” that he didn’t let that knowledge either influence his psychology or help him understand how founded in universal truths it really was. The value of the models to me is that they *aren’t just “his path”, “your path”, or “my path” to understanding myself and others. They reflect rather the intelligent design of (and created purpose for) the human mind, in its 16 basic varieties. How much more robust would their conclusions be if they didn’t leave God out of the picture, as your citations appear to make Jung’s foundation do? 

Thanks to those models, I came to understand (“through the back door”) that in Matthew 5:1-16, Jesus Christ anticipated Carl Jung and the whole of personality type psychology - ego, cognition, interaction style, and temperament, in that order - by 1,900 years! It really is true by Jesus’ measure: “character is what you *do about your personality”. Knowing that (to me) is an incredible gift! 

But I need not linger on religion, save to say that the Bible (both Testaments) denies the validity of the whole range of positions on politicalcompass.org.uk - save dead center. It refutes both being “conservative” and being “liberal”. Better put, authoritarian, libertarian, economic right, and economic left positions *all are radically selfish to a greater or lesser degree. Only *balance between corporate authority and personal responsibility, and between private interest and public welfare, enables the one legitimate use of human power: service to God, other human beings, and the natural world. 

Thus, what the two psychologists who created the Compass claim - there is no “wrong answer” to their test - is totally false. Honesty in the test rather points out what one needs to change, and in what direction. As it happens, within the margin of error, I *am dead center on the Compass. But I didn’t get that way overnight. 

WHAT GOD REVEALS THROUGH NATURE 

Have you ever read Romans 1:18-32? It’s Paul’s scathing critique of the Greek philosophers, which he read as Saul in Tarsus and encountered as Paul in Athens. He says therein not one word about any specific theistic religion. He writes rather of what *Theos reveals through nature to every thinking person - everyone who looks at what is in front of him and follows that evidence where it leads. (Paul and I share ENFP biases there - the approach to truth via Occam’s Razor touches me as it touched him.) 

Paul would say, as I would: Everyone (that is, everyone who sees and believes the witness of “Nature, and Nature’s God”) “holds these truths to be self-evident”. Everyone knows that God exists. Everyone knows God’s attributes. Everyone knows that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” - and life on earth. Everyone knows that God intervenes in the world, for good or ill; “acts of God” are not called that by insurance agents for nothing. Everyone knows that human life is exceptional. Everyone knows it begins at conception. Everyone knows it was created male and female. Everyone knows there must be a high human destiny indeed beyond this life. Everyone knows we cannot attain that destiny on our own. Everyone knows better than to hold to the naturalist fallacy (“what is, is good because it is”), because nobody in his right mind underestimates the Law of Entropy and the power of “dumb luck” (time and chance). Everyone realizes that the existence of evil is due either to the absence of God and/or to rebellion against God - but not because a holy, loving God doesn’t exist. 

Not everyone wants to admit all this, however. Humanity has spent and still spends an incredible amount of effort avoiding the obvious. Whole religions, philosophies, pseudoscientific ideas, and (yes) secular psychological schools have been invented to avoid it. Paul found such efforts inexcusable - and so do I. 

One other thing is just as obvious from nature: patriarchy “worthy of the name” is part of the natural order for human beings. It is good, not evil. It protects, nurtures, and even empowers women and children, while enabling men to fulfill their proper roles also. Feminist claims to the contrary mostly reflect the fact that most people of both sexes and all ages haven’t “gotten the memo on the subject” - not even from nature. 

But just because men naturally rule the household—and since the same rule applies biblically to both Church and State—does that mean women should be shut out of public life? Exactly the opposite is true. There are so many wonderful things that women can do, without usurping genuine patriarchy in the home, that there is no excuse for not allowing them to do it or for not rewarding them accordingly. In many cases, “husband-wife teams” (as it were, “a king and a queen”) seem the ideal solution. I only found out recently that my late teacher, (Mme.) Suzanne Haik-Vantoura (INFJ), was a champion of opportunities for fellow women composers of music. In all her letters to me, she never told me that. Good for her. Such women never should have been underrated or undervalued in the first place. The acknowledged greatest composers of ancient Greek song on the one hand and of Gregorian chant on the other, both were women. Take that, male chauvinists! 

WE *ALL “VIOLATE COMMUNITY STANDARDS”! 

You posted a meme lamenting the fact that many don’t pursue the deeper issues of life. May I propose why? It likely is out of fear that if they did, they really would find out the truth of another meme you posted: “their very existence violates Community Standards”! That is “the Lesson of the Book of Job”, which I suspect Jung’s analysis of the book never inferred. Job’s problem was not what he had *done, but what he *was: self-righteous, egotistical, proud in spirit, call it what one will. The one thing Jung could never give him - genuine surrender to and reliance on God rather than on self - is the one thing he desperately needed. 

Put another way, Job used all his cognitive and other functions as effectively as any mortal that ever lived. First Elihu and then Yehawweh (יהוה)—the Eternal Creator God—had to teach him that doing so wasn’t enough. “Job’s own right hand couldn’t save him” (the Eternal’s critique); and moreover, since he justified the wicked, he was just as bad as the wicked and needed the Eternal’s severe correction (Elihu’s critique). When Job received that correction, the Eternal gave him back double what he had lost. 

I faced that terrible realization about myself at 17. It led to my Christian conversion. The models you taught me (so late in life) only reinforced the truth of it, even as it added wonderful tools to deal with that reality. 

As Paul said again, everyone knows deep down that he has done something against the Eternal’s law that is worthy of eternal death (exactly that—eternal non-existence—not eternal life in any kind of hell fire!). Bringing that realization to one’s conscious mind is the most stunning event that can happen to a person. It is also the only thing that can bring genuine healing. But as then, so now, not only do many do evil things despite what even nature teaches them, but they are allies of others who do—all in the name of “tolerance” and “human rights” and the naturalist fallacy. 

So, all that is my response to what I’ve been reading. Make of it what you will. 

Respectfully,

John Wheeler (יוחנן רכב)