Evolving the eight-function model
8 archetypes guide how the function-attitudes
are expressed in an individual psyche
Historical background:
Jung’s eight functions
It was C G Jung, of course, who introduced
the language we use today: words such asfunction and attitude, as well as his highly
specific names for the four functions of
our conscious orientation (thinking, feeling,
sensation, intuition), and the two attitudes
through which those orientations are deployed (introversion and extraversion).

John Beebe
There’s much talk in the typeworld nowadays about theEight-Function or Whole
Type Model, and my nameis sometimes brought up asa pioneer in this area.
I appreciate this opportunity toestablish the historical context of what I’ve contributed,
and explain in my own words
what my innovations are.
John Beebe MD (ENTP), a Jungian
analyst, lectures on psychologicaltypes in many parts of the world. His
writings on type have appeared in
the Chiron Clinical Series, Journalof Analytical Psychology, Psychological Perspectives, and several
books, including his pioneering 1992
study, Integrity in Depth.
johnbeebe@msn.com

Australian Psychological Type Review

Establishing the rationale for this language
as a helpful basis for the analysis of consciousness was the purpose of his 1921
book, Psychological Types. Toward theend of that book he combined function
types and attitude types to describe, inturn, eight function-attitudes. Regrettably
it wasn’t until Dick Thompson publishedhis 1996 book Jung’s Function-Attitudes
Explained that we had that term for them,so most Jungians have simply referred tothem as eight ‘functions’.
Nevertheless, for Jung the attitude type was
the primary thing, and the function type akind of sub-something that expressed that
attitude in a particular way. Accordingly,
he organised his general description of thetypes in terms of the attitudes, describing
first ‘the peculiarities of the basic psychological functions in the extraverted attitude’and then going on to ‘the peculiarities ofthe basic psychological functions in the
introverted attitude.’Jung started with extraverted thinking andextraverted feeling (which he called ‘theextraverted rational types’) and extraverted
sensation and extraverted intuition (‘theextraverted irrational types’), before turning to the introverted types: introverted
thinking and introverted feeling (‘introverted rational types’), and introverted

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sensation and introverted intuition (‘introverted irrational types’). These were theeight functions in Jung’s original description.
These functions were nothing less thancapacities for consciousness residing within any individual—though of course mostpeople do not differentiate all these capacities for their own use. It was Jung who
taught us that most people pair a rational
function with an irrational one to develop
a conscious orientation, or, as he put it, an
ego-consciousness, that for most people
involves just these two differentiatedfunctions.
Despite Isabel Briggs Myers’s later reading of a single sentence in Jung’s long andoften contradictory book (Myers & Myers
1980:19; Jung 1921/1971:406, para 668),
he never made clear that the attitude typeof the two functions in this two-function
model of consciousness would alternate
between function # 1 and function #2.
Jung did, however, open the door to thepossibility of a further differentiation offunctions, up to a limiting number of four:
the fourth to differentiate being his famous‘inferior’ function, which remains too close
to the unconscious, and thus a source oferrors and complexes.
Jung said relatively little about the thirdfunction. He expected that both functions#3 and #4 would, in most people, remain
potentials only, residing in the unconscious,
represented in dreams in archaic ways andrelatively refractory to development except
under exceptional circumstances—such as
the individuation process Jung sometimes
witnessed in the analysis of a relatively
mature person in the second half of life,
when the archaic functions would press
for integration into consciousness.

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John Beebe: Evolving the 8-function model

Anima / Animus:
Bridge to the Unconscious
When Jung’s close associate Marie Louise
von Franz published her Zurich seminaron the inferior function, in Lectures inJung’s Typology, I was already a candidate in analytic training at the C G Jung
Institute of San Francisco. Her discussionof the possibilities for development in thislargely unconscious area of the mind was
thrilling to read, and it opened up the fourfunction model for a whole generation ofanalysts.
Von Franz made it clear that we have a
choice about developing function #3, butthat the integration of function #4, theinferior function, is very much under thecontrol of the unconscious, which limits
what we can do with it. Nevertheless, thismuch of the unconscious belongs in a senseto the ego—and even provides the bridgeto the Self that the other differentiatedfunctions can not.

The functions are carried
into consciousness on thebacks of the archetypes

Note 1
I have adopted Jung’s use of Latin when
speaking of the Anima and Animus (literally,‘soul’ and ‘spirit’) because that language
allows for gender (the Anima often being afeminine figure in a man, and the Animus amasculine one in a woman), and because
it conveys the archaic quality of these deep
structures of the mind that Jung uncoveredin his explorations of the unconscious.
Jung called them archetypes of the collective unconscious, but when carrying function#4, the inferior function, I feel they also form
part of the conscious mind’s functioning.
Hence I regard them as ego-syntonic—
compatible with the ego and its preferredfunction-attitude—even though carrying
values from the unconscious mind thatcompensate the attitude of the person’s
superior function.

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I became aware that the inferior function
was often thought by Jungian analysts tooperate in this way because it is ‘carried’
by the Anima or Animus, archetypes ofsoul that can serve as tutelary figures, representing the otherness of the unconscious
psyche, and also its capacity to speak to us
to enlarge our conscious perspectives (Jung1921/1971: 467-472) (note 1). The Animaand Animus are like fairy bridges to theunconscious, allowing, almost magically,a relationship to develop between the twoparts of the mind, conscious and unconscious, with the potential to replace thistension of opposites with the harmony ofwholeness. And it is through the undifferentiated, incorrigible inferior function thatthey do their best work!

Basic orientation: Hero/Heroine,
Father/Mother, Puer/Puella
By then I thought I knew my own type—extraverted intuition, with introverted thinking as my second function—and I had taken
the MBTI questionnaire, which scored me
ENTP, in apparent confirmation of my selfdiagnosis. It was in dreams that I met myAnima as a humble, introverted-sensation

type Chinese laundress, and it was she who
could provide me a bridge to the practicalities of life that my conscious standpoint,
ever theoretical, tended to leave out. I think
it was also she who made me consider
sorting out the rest of my consciousness.
Which archetypes were associated withmy other functions?
I began to watch my dreams. Gradually it
became obvious that when they symbolised
my extraverted intuition, it was in a heroic,rather grandiose way. (In a dream, I once
saw President Lyndon Johnson, architectof the Great Society in my country, as animage of my dominant extraverted intuition,
which gave it a high-handed, crafty cast, a
bit out of touch with the actual readinessof those around me for the changes that I
wanted to introduce in their lives, in thename of helping them progress.)
My introverted thinking was symbolised
by a Father in one dream that found him
in conflict with an upset feeling-type son,whom I eventually recognised as an imageof my third function. The particular son
figure in the dream was a persistently immature man in analysis at the time, whose
oscillation of woundedness and creativity
fit well the description Marie Louise vonFranz had given in her classic study of the‘problem of the Puer Aeternus’ (1970), theLatin term referring to an eternal boyhood
befitting an immortal. I decided that thisdream was referring to an aspect of myown feeling that was inflated, vulnerable
and chronically immature.
In this way, I began to evolve my understanding that the four functions are brought
into consciousness through the dynamic
energy of particular archetypes:• Hero for the superior function• Father for the second or ‘auxiliary’
function• Puer for the tertiary function• Anima for the inferior function
My functions were carried into consciousness on the backs of those archetypes! A
great deal of their functioning, even after
they became conscious—that is, available
to me as ways of perceiving and assessing
reality—continued to reflect the characteristic behaviour of these archetypes.

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Later, I found evidence in the dreams ofwomen for a Heroine, a Mother, and a
Puella Aeterna (eternal girl), symbolising
the first three functions of consciousness
in a highly analogous arrangement to theway my own were symbolised. I could
also verify from their dreams what other
Jungian analysts had already established,that the Animus carries the inferior function for a woman—although I came to reserve that term for a spirit or soul figure
operating as a bridge to the unconscious,and not simply to refer to an antagonistic
or argumentative side of the woman, as
some were doing in accord with the morenormal English language use of the word
animus, which does not include its Jungian,spiritual meaning (Emma Jung, 1957).
I went public with these ideas for the firsttime in 1983, at a conference for Jungian
analysts and candidates at Ghost Ranch in
Abiquiu, New Mexico. There I offered thefirst archetypal model for the various positions of consciousness that heretofore had
been called ‘superior’, ‘auxiliary’, ‘tertiary’and ‘inferior’ functions. I suggested thatthese should be thought of, respectively, as
the Heroic function, the Father or Motherfunction, the Puer or Puella function, and
the Anima or Animus function, in accord
with the nature of the archetype that had
taken up residence in each of these fourbasic locations of potential consciousness.
Wow! Behind each typological position in
the unfolding of conscious, an archetypewas involved, guiding us to be heroic, parental, and even puerile and contrasexual, as
part of what makes us capable of becoming cognisant of ourselves and the world
around us.

The Shadow Personality:
Opposing Personality,
Senex/Witch, Trickster,
Demonic Personality
At the time I was too dazzled by the seeming completeness of the four-function model
to see that even more delineation was needed to make sense of what Jung had said
we could find in ourselves, if his vision ofa wholeness to consciousness could be realised.

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Four functions were still only half the storyof how consciousness arranges itself. Jungsaid in Psychological Types that if one takes
into account the all-important attitudes,
extraversion and introversion, we have torealise that there are in all eight functions,or, as we say now, function-attitudes.
Von Franz had postulated that the greatestdifficulties that occur between people areon the basis of one using a function with aparticular attitude (e.g., extraversion), andthe other using the same function with the
opposite attitude (e.g., introversion). I decided to apply that idea to the situation
within a single psyche, in which the antagonism was not between two people,
but between two functions with opposite
attitudes, seeking to express themselves
within the same person.
The result, I realised, was almost always arepression of one member of such a pairof functions, as a consequence of the conscious preference for the attitude throughwhich the other member of the pair was
expressing that function. In my own case,
I had figured out that my tertiary function
was not only feeling, but extraverted feeling, and that my inferior function was introverted sensation. Where were my introverted feeling and extraverted sensation?
Obviously, deep in the unconscious, kept
there because they were shadow in attitude
to the function-attitudes that I had differentiated.

Four functions are only
half the story of how consciousness arranges itself

Even more in shadow were the functions
opposite in attitude to my first two functions—that is, the introverted intuition thatmy superior extraverted intuition tended
to inhibit, and the extraverted thinking thatmy auxiliary introverted thinking looked
down upon.
These four functions—introverted intuition, extraverted thinking, introverted feeling, extraverted sensation—continued toexpress themselves, however, in shadowy
ways. What, then, were the archetypes thatcarried these repressed shadow functions?
Answering this question led me to take up
the problem of the types in shadow, whichhas preoccupied me ever since. Work in thisarea has to be tentative, because we neverfully see our own shadow, but in my caseI began to identify typical, shadowy ways

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John Beebe: Evolving the 8-function modelin which I would use the four functions thatlie in the shadow of my more differentiatedquartet of individuated function-attitudes.
My introverted intuition, shadow in attitude to my superior extraverted intuition,
has decidedly oppositional traits: it expresses itself in ways I could variously
describe as avoidant, passive-aggressive,
paranoid and seductive, in all cases taking
up a stance that is anathema to the way mysuperior extraverted intuition wants me tobehave. I decided to call the archetypecarrying this bag of oppositional behaviours the Opposing Personality.

I no longer view the typeprofile as a rigid hierarchyof differentiation of thefunctions

Note 2.
In choosing the name Trickster for this sideof my shadow, I drew upon Jung’s classic
delineations of the Trickster archetype(Jung 1948/1967; Jung 1954/1959).
Note 3.
As with the Opposing Personality, the term
Demonic Personality is my own creation. In
developing my model I deliberately left theseterms large and vague to convey the vast
stretches of personality territory involved inthese dark and largely unexplored areas ofmyself where my shadow typology expresses
itself as character pathology.

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Similarly, my fatherly introverted thinking,a patient teacher of complex ideas, wasshadowed by a dogmatic, donnish extraverted thinking that didn’t listen, or evencare about others’ ideas. I decided to callthis rather pompous, unrelated figure mySenex, using James Hillman’s (1967/1979)
choice of name for an archetype that is
coldly, arrogantly, judgmental, in an oldman-pulling-rank sort of way. (The Latin
word senex, root of our word ‘senator’,means ‘old man’.)Gradually I realised that women I knew had
a similar archetype carrying the shadowof their normally motherly auxiliary function, and that this archetype displays manyof the ‘negative mother’ characteristics I
had learned to associate with the Witch
figure in European fairytales (von Franz
1972).
The shadow side of my eager-to-please but
oh-so-vulnerable-to-the-feelings-of-others
internal boy was the Trickster, which inme, with its confident introverted feeling,
could reverse any expectation—to doublebind anybody who tries to ride herd on thechild. (As a little boy, to taunt my motherwhen she expected perfection of me, I
actually used to draw the two-faced god
Mercurius, although I did not yet know
his mythological identity) (note 2).
Finally, I began to see my extraverted sensation, the shadow side of my Anima introverted sensation, as a Demonic Personalitythat often operates as an undermining oaf,a beastly part of myself that neverthelesscan occasionally be an uncanny source forthe infusion of redemptive spirit into mydealings with myself and others (note 3).

The four archetypes of shadow—Opposing
Personality, Senex/Witch, Trickster, andDemonic Personality—and the functionattitudes they carried for me—introverted
intuition, extraverted thinking, introverted
feeling, extraverted sensation—were allwhat a psychologist would call ego-dystonic. That is, they were incompatible withmy conscious ego or sense of ‘I-ness’—what I normally own as part of ‘me’ and‘my’ values. Nevertheless, they were partof my total functioning as a person, uncomfortable as it made me to recognise the fact.
In this way, using myself as an example,
and my years of Jungian analysis as alaboratory, I eventually came to identify
eight discrete archetypes guiding the way
the eight function-attitudes are expressed
within a single, individual psyche (Beebe
2004).
Although, for convenience of reference,and out of respect for the traditional numbering of the functions, I am in the habitof assigning numbers to the functionattitude ‘positions’ associated with thesearchetypes, I no longer view the type profile of an individual as expressing a rigid
hierarchy of differentiation of the various
functions of consciousness.
Rather, I have come to regard the positions
the types of function-attitude seem to occupy, when we construct a model of themin our minds, in a much more qualitative
light. It is as if they form an interacting castof characters through which the different
functions may express themselves in theongoing drama of self and shadow that isanyone’s lived psychological life.
Although the actual casting of specificfunction-attitudes in the various roles will
be governed by the individual’s type, theroles themselves seem to be found in everyone’s psyche. Hence I regard them as archetypal complexes carrying the different functions, and I like to speak of them as typicalsubpersonalities found in all of us.
I have spent many years verifying thisscheme. Through observation of clientsand others whose types and complexes I
have gotten to know well, and through theanalysis of films by master filmmakers inwhich archetypes and function-attitudes

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are clearly delineated, I have concluded
that the relationships between these archetypes and the scheme of differentiationthat results for the function-attitudes is not
merely personal to me, but is actually universal.

More importantly, the model allows me tosee what position that function-attitude inhabits, and thereby I am pointed to watch
for the archetypal ways in which, as a consequence of being in that position, that particular consciousness expresses itself.

References

The archetypal roles within this scheme
are shown in Diagram 1. An example of
how the model distributes consciousness
in an ENFJ is provided in Diagram 2.

I am grateful that this model is leading
present-day type assessors to take a second look at C G Jung’s foundational eightfunction description of the types.

Margaret T Hartzler, Robert W McAlpine,and Leona Haas 2005, Introduction totype and the 8 Jungian functions,
Mountain View, CA: CPP.

DIAGRAM 1: Archetypal complexes carrying the eight functions of consciousness
Hero / Heroine

Opposing Personality#1 (superior or dominantfunction)#5 (same function as #1
but with opposite attitude)

Father / Mother#2 (auxiliary function)

Senex / Witch

Trickster#3 (tertiary function)#6 (same function as #2
but with opposite attitude)#7 (same function as #3
but with opposite attitude)

Demonic Personality#4 (inferior function)#8 (same function as #4
but with opposite attitude)

DIAGRAM 2: ENFJ as an illustration of Dr John Beebe’s arrangement of
the archetypal complexes carrying the eight functions of consciousness
Extraverted feeling
Hero / Heroine

Introverted feeling
Opposing personality#1 (superior function)#5 (shadow of Hero/Heroine)

Introverted intuition
Father / Mother

Extraverted sensing
Puer / Puella

Extraverted intuition
Senex / Witch

Introverted sensing
Trickster#2 (auxiliary function)#3 (tertiary function)#6 (shadow of Father/Mother)#7 (shadow of Puer/Puella)

Introverted thinking
Anima / Animus

Extraverted thinking
Demonic Personality#4 (inferior function)#8 (shadow of Anima/Animus)

James Hillman 1979 (1967), ‘Senex and
Puer’, in J Hillman (editor), Puer papers,
Dallas, TX: Spring, pp 3-53.
C G Jung 1971 (1921), Psychological types(The collected works of C G Jung,volume 6), London: Routledge.

Puer / Puella

Anima / Animus

John Beebe 2004, ‘Understanding consciousness through the theory of psychological types’, in J Cambray & L Carter,
Analytical Psychology, Hove and New
York: Brunner Routledge, pp 83-115.

C G Jung 1959 (1954), ‘On the psychologyof the Trickster figure’, in The archetypes of the collective unconscious(The collected works of C G Jung,volume 9), London: Routledge, pp
255-272.
C G Jung 1967 (1948), ‘The spirit mercurius’,in Alchemical studies (The collected
works of C G Jung, volume 13), London:
Routledge, pp 191-250.
Emma Jung 1957, ‘On the nature of theAnimus’, in Animus and Anima, New
York: Spring.
Isabel Briggs Myers, with Peter Myers 1995
(1980), Gifts differing: Understanding
personality type. Palo Alto, CA:
Davies-Black.
Henry L Thompson 1996, Jung’s functionattitudes explained, Watkinsville, GA:
Wormhole.
Marie-Louise von Franz 1970, The problemof the Puer Aeternus, New York: Spring.
Marie-Louise von Franz 1971, ‘The inferior
function’, in M L von Franz and James
Hillman, Lectures in Jung’s typology,
Zurich: Spring.
Marie-Louise von Franz 1972, Problems of
the Feminine in fairytales, New York:
Spring.

This article was first published in
TypeFace 16:2 (Summer 2005),

This model of the archetypal complexes
that carry the eight functions of consciousness is my present instrument for the exploration of type in myself and others. It
enables me to see, in just about any interaction, what consciousness (that is, whichfunction-attitude) I am using at that given
time.

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My hope is that their increasing comfort
with a total eight-function, rather than apreferred four-function, model will enable
them to begin to recognise the extraordinary role possibilities that emerge, both forgood and for ill, as these consciousnesses
differentiate themselves in the course of
personal development.
March 2006

and is reprinted here, in a slightly
different form, by permission ofJohn Beebe and the British APT.
Text and diagrams © 2005
John Beebe MD, 337 Spruce St,
San Francisco, CA 94118, USA
johnbeebe@msn.com

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