Understanding the cognitive functions can help you:

  • Improve your personal relationships, including your love life
  • Direct your work and career efforts
  • Grow in a way that suits your unique capacities
  • Become more accepting of yourself and others

The eight cognitive functions are different aspects of consciousness and together they create a totality of consciousness. Carl Jung introduced the idea of cognitive functions back in 1921 with his book Psychological Types. He emphasized that these eight functions were not just evident in people but were evident in nature as well.

The premise here is that every person uses all eight cognitive functions (also called 'mental functions' or just 'functions') but they use and emphasize certain cognitive functions more readily according to their personality type. In other words, according to how our brain works, each of us naturally embodies certain aspects of consciousness more than others.

In addition to understanding a person's unique perspective Jung was also concerned with growth and integration. In other words, how does an individual grow from their natural emphasis of consciousness into embodying a more integrated and expansive consciousness.

One of the most exciting things about understanding how the eight cognitive functions work is the reality that your personality type is just a starting place for growth. It's less like a box and more like where your cognitive tree was planted. From there you can branch out in a multitude of ways.

When you learn the functional dynamics that underwrite each personality type you can start to grasp the unique dance of consciousness that goes on within us according to our type, and become much more adept at understanding yourself and others. This understanding makes personality type a lot less boxy. Your understanding will become more fluid, more relational, more growth oriented, and more relevant.

Are you ready to begin learning about the eight cognitive functions?

This takes a bit of thinking and memorization but once you get it, I think you'll find the info very useful. The functions differ from each other in four important ways:

  1. Half of them are introverted (inward and subjective) and half are extraverted (outward and objective).
  2. Half of them help us perceive reality and half of them help us make decisions based on what we perceive.
  3. Of the perceiving functions half of them are sensing functions that are based on our five senses. These functions are concrete and factual by nature. The other perceiving functions are intuitive functions that emphasize the connections and potentials that exist within and from the concrete, factual realm.
  4. Of the deciding functions, half of them are logic based. These logical thinking functions are impersonal and focus on mechanistic cause and effect. The other deciding functions are feeling based. That is, they focus on how people are affected and are empathetic in nature.

Without further ado, let's lay out the cognitive functions:

The introverted deciding functions are:

  • Introverted Feeling. Most conscious of personal values and personal authenticity. Deeply analyzes values from personal to universal.
  • Introverted Thinking. Most conscious of personal logic and principles. Deeply analyzes logical foundations of mechanisms in a holistic.

The introverted perceiving functions are:

  • Introverted Sensing. Most conscious of internal sensations and memory. Deeply analyzes past precedence and tradition.
  • Introverted Intuition. Most conscious of internal connections and patterns producing future outcomes and underlying meanings.

The extraverted deciding functions are:

  • Extraverted Feeling. Focuses action on interpersonal relationships. Values how we treat others, social harmony, and group morale.
  • Extraverted Thinking. Focuses action on productivity, timelines, achieving objectives. Evaluates mechanisms in a linear and objective way.

The extraverted perceiving functions are:

  • Extraverted Sensing. Most conscious of here and now physical stimulus. Focuses on tactical action, in the moment response to sensory stimulus.
  • Extraverted Intuition. Most conscious of patterns and meanings that generate possibilities for the outside world.

 

Isabel Myers and her mother Katharine Briggs developed their Jung-Myers theory based on Jung's thoughts and developed the MBTI assessment as well. Jung had eight personality types, based on one's personal preference for one of the eight functions. Isabel and Katharine expanded the repertoire to 16 types, based on the preference for both a primary and auxiliary function. Jung's cognitive functions remain as the backbone to understanding personality type in depth.

One key idea that is often missed is that personality type captures the way we uniquely direct our consciousness.