Sensation or Intuition (S/N)

Excerpted from Please Understand Me II, by David Keirsey

Carl Jung used the words "sensation" and "sensing" (S)to mean paying attention to what is going on outside ourselves, that is, external attention. Thus "sensation" may be used synonymously with three words pertaining to external attention,"observation", "externalization," and "exteroception."

In contrast, Jung gave us two engaging metaphors to convey how he used the word "intuition" (N). Intuition, he said, is "listening to the inner voice" or "heeding the promptings from within." The word "intuition" is engaging because it literally means "internal attention." We pay attention to what is going on inside ourselves with our mind's eye and our mind's ear, these promptings coming as thoughts and feelings. Thus "intuition" can be used synonymously with three other terms pertaining to internal attention, "introspection," "internalization," and "interoception." So we can contrast "introspection" with "observation," "internalization" with "externalization," and "interoception" with "exteroception."

For the purposes of describing personality types, I have found the easiest and most accurate terms to be "introspection" and "observation."

Very simply, we observe objects through our senses. Thus we look at objects to see them, listen to sounds to hear them, touch surfaces to feel them, sniff odors to smell them, and mouth substances to taste them. We can observe what is present, but not what isn't present. Whatever isn't present to our senses we can only imagine by means of introspection.

Naturally, all of us do both observation and introspection, but it is a rare individual who does an equal amount of each. The vast majority of us, maybe 85%, spend most of our waking hours looking at, listening to, and touching objects in our immediate presence, and very little of our time introspecting, that is, making inferences, imagining, daydreaming, musing, or wondering about things not in our presence.

The point not to be missed is that we cannot do these things simultaneously. When we observe what's going on around us, we cannot at the same time observe what's going on within us. We may alternate our attention, but we cannot divide it. Some of us, from infancy on, seem to be more raptly attentive to inner promptings, others, to outer promptings. The reason for this difference in attention is not at all clear, and certainly it is a matter of conjecture. But if the reason for this preference in attention is obscure, the consequences of it are not. Those of us who attend inwardly much of the time as children strengthen that preference, our inner voice becoming louder and clearer, our inner promptings more vivid and complex. Likewise, those of us who heed the external much of the time come to see and hear objects in more detail and with greater specificity.