Booklet Review by Jack Falt
Right from the beginning, Jung and Myers saw a hierarchy within the mental functions or cognitive processes that each person has: dominant, auxiliary, tertiary and inferior. If there are eight cognitive functions, what about the other four? It would seem that John Beebe, a Jungian analyst, was one of the first to work out the complete hierarchical order for all eight cognitive processes for each of the sixteen types. Beebe saw these as archetypes and gave them classical names. Beebe has given lectures, and has written articles on this topic but has yet to write a book for the layperson.
In Berens previous booklet Dynamics of Personality Type: Understanding and Applying Jung’s Cognitive Processes (Telos, 1999) she provided a couple of pages to describe the Patterns of Process for this hierarchy. This present booklet carries on from there by devoting two pages to each of the sixteen types, describing each of the Patterns of Process for each specific type. Whereas Beebe used classical names for his archetypes, Berens/Nardi chose to think of them as roles, and to use words that were in more common usage. Beebe emphasised the positive aspects of the primary processes (the first four) with a suggestion that they could be engaged negatively as well and the negative aspects of the shadow processes (the last four)with a glimmer of how they could be positive. Berens/Nardi saw that in the primary processes there could be negative elements as well if the process was overused, and positive elements in the shadow processes that could be used for transformation. Dynamics has a chart in the appendix comparing Jung, Myers, Beebe and Berens own terms. In that chart the author gave a positive and negative word for each role. In Personality Type Code the authors only use one word for each role, although the other word is used in the description.
We still have access to all eight cognitive processes, and it would seem that they only take on the aspect of roles under stress or trauma. This is an area of personality type theory that needs much more investigation.
While this booklet does follow from the previous series, it is fairly complete in itself. A stand alone workshop could be given using this booklet as a resource, assuming the participants have a basic understanding of psychological type. Each of the cognitive processes is described and exercises are given to help people understand the concepts. There are a several changes of the names of cognitive processes in this booklet. The authors continue to search for the one key word that best represents each of the eight cognitive processes. Si has been renamed from recalling to reviewing; Ne has been renamed from inferring to interpreting; Te has been renamed from organizing to segmenting; Fe has been renamed from considering others to connecting; and Fi has been renamed from evaluating importance to valuing.
A chart is given for cracking the type code so that people can figure out their own hierarchy of cognitive processes. As an example, for an ESTP, the primary processes would be: Se, Ti, Fe and Ni. The roles they would play would be: Se - Leading, Ti - Supporting, Fe - Relief, and Ni - Aspirational. The shadow processes would be: Si, Te, Fi and Ne. The roles they would play would be: Si - Opposing, Te - Critical, Fi - Deceiving, and Ne - Devilish.
This booklet could be used for a workshop looking at personality type in more depth, or as a handout to clients wanting to understand how type plays out in their lives. At the very least you will want to look up your own type to see how your own cognitive processes may play various roles in your life.