Personality characteristics are complex. We live with our personalities without giving them much consideration but that’s an unconscious (not aware) way to live. Here are some ways to become more conscious of your personality.
I previously introduced several personality characteristics – extraversion, introversion, thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensation functions. Now, I want to introduce a couple of influences on these characteristics – the masculine and feminine sides of a person’s psychology. The feminine side involves relational qualities, while the masculine side involves linear qualities.
Let’s consider the influences of both on one personality function, the thinking function. Thinking enables us to evaluate and answer the question “What is …?” As we face a situation, we can think our way through each element. In general, however, it’s the masculine psychological side that influences, in a linear way, thinking such that it follows a chain of details, one following from the other before determining a result. This is a valid way to think. It is causal and directed. Again, this is a very helpful way to think and probably is the basis of scientific thinking. But it’s not the only way to think.
Another way to think our way through situations is influenced by the feminine psychological side. This thinking evaluates too but the influence imposes relational qualities on the thinking process. Experiences include the telling of a story, describing an historical event, or addressing situations with possibilities and associations related to the situations. As an example, consider going to the store to buy food for visitors and thinking that one person prefers vegetables rather than meat, while the other guests prefer meat. In this situation, using the relational side within the context of the situation brings creative solutions or solutions addressing everyone’s likes and dislikes. The linear influence in this situation might think vegetables and meat are needed, and that’s it.
As another example, consider people who can only learn with visual cues or images. This type of learning also uses the thinking function but is influenced by the feminine psychological side since visual qualities influence the thinking. Of course, other parts of a person’s psychology might be involved in learning and thinking, but that is exactly how the feminine side functions. It utilizes different parts of the person’s psychology in a relational way to influence the thinking function. Although the relational influence on thinking might seem quite natural for many people, so too is the influence from linear thinking.
So, it seems these two influential sides to thinking actually give us something to think about.
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